


Coming Home

by inexorablydrawn



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, First Love, First Time, Fluff and Angst, Highschool ages, School Reunion, Tags to be added, Timeskip, Underage Drinking, references to past abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-14
Updated: 2019-01-19
Packaged: 2019-03-04 22:14:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 14
Words: 32,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13374138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inexorablydrawn/pseuds/inexorablydrawn
Summary: She hadn’t seen him in ten years, but she somehow doubted he could have changed all that much.  To go to a ten-year reunion that all the underclassmen of his time had helped set up seemed like something Ben would avoid at all costs.   He was in New York now, there was no need to fly halfway across the country to see a bunch of people that he never even liked.--A Modern AU of finding First Love and confronting it again when you thought you lost it.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unless otherwise stated, for clarity's sake, each break is a time jump. From the past to current day. Ben's POV is the past, while Rey's is current.

_Good Girls always went for Bad Boys._   
  
_That has been the universal truth since the earliest recordings of mankind._

_And not only was she good, but she was also perfect._

Ben saw her from out of the corner of his eye as he grabbed his first-period books from his locker.He’d heard Hux and Phasma chattering when a voice unfamiliar to him chimed into their conversation.The voice was feminine and shared Hux and Phasma’s accent, which was strange since they were the only two transfer students at Hosnian Prime. He perked up to observe the trio that approached him, particularly eyeing the smallest one.

She was most obviously cute, that was impossible to argue.Anyone with half a brain would know that.She had sun-kissed skin with prominent freckles across her nose, sharp eyes that popped with the light mascara she was wearing, and warm brown hair pulled neatly out of her face.She wore a knee-length yellow dress, which she clearly was uncomfortable in given how her arms wrapped around herself in fear she would stand out too much. The gesture was cute.Really cute.

“Ren!” Phasma shouted as they approached him, ramming him hard in the back with her unusually large palm.Ben had been the tallest kid in school until Phasma transferred as part of the exchange program last year.While she may have only beat him in height by a centimeter or so, she liked exerting her dominance with brute strength. 

“Ren, this is Rey Jakson, she’s our new transfer this year,” Hux said as Ben looked over his shoulder at them.

“Hello,” the girl waved, completely uninterested in this encounter.Her eyes darted around the halls at the other students who passed by. 

Ben contemplated a response.‘Hello’ was too redundant.‘How are you liking Hosnian Prime?’ was too long, it was more opportunity for his voice to waver or crack. “Hi,” he replied with a shrug and turned back towards his locker before anyone could point out the flush in his face. 

“Don’t mind him, he’s always like that,” Hux threw up a hand as they began to walk off again.Ben had half a mind to argue that but his throat had closed entirely. 

He stuck out his head just enough to watch her leave, the buns on the back of her head bouncing slightly with each step.Thankfully enough his eyes were focused on the back of her head, opposed to anywhere else, when she turned around slightly, looking back at him for a quick moment before they both quickly pretended that they never made eye contact and gazed in opposite directions. 

 

_—_

 

“Are you nervous?” Finn asked as they set up punch bowls around the banquet hall. 

“Why would I be nervous?” Rey responded, as casually as she could have, but she coughed on her words and Finn laughed. 

“So… clearly yes.” 

Both Finn and Rey had stayed in the state after graduation, both attending college in the city, never straying far after that. 

“Running into your high school sweetheart again can be weird,” Finn started and Rey cringed at the word ‘sweetheart’ in particular. 

“You see your high school girlfriend all the time and it’s not weird,” Rey tried to argue, realizing how idiotic her comment was only after it was made.

“Well, Rose married me,” he laughed again, shooting a wave towards his wife who was helping place fold-out chairs around tables. 

They were the lucky ones.Finn and Rose.They dated, they fell in love, they had career paths and dreams that fit together perfectly, and everything just worked out. They had been married two years and were still ridiculously happy, and Rey had been hardened to believe that was impossible for anyone else. 

“Plus, he probably won’t show up,” Rey added, stirring the punch bowl a little too rapidly as some of it splashed over the edge. 

She hadn’t seen _him_  in ten years, but she somehow doubted he could have changed that much.To go to a ten-year reunion that all the underclassmen of his time had helped set up seemed like something Ben would avoid at all costs. He was in New York now, there was no need to fly halfway across the country to see a bunch of people that he never even liked.She doubted Hux or Phasma would fly in for such an event either. 

“He RSVP’d,” Finn said, wiping up the spilled drink,“and you came in from Chicago just to help set up.”

“Driving an hour-ish out of the city to help Leia is different than flying in from New York to see old peers.” 

“Still, it’s not _your_ reunion.”Finn smiled to himself a bit, he was always happy to see an old friend, but it was clear she had other intentions by the way she dressed up.“You look beautiful, by the way.”

“Shut up,” Rey growled as she stormed off to help Rose and the others with other preparations. 

 

—

 

She kept fidgeting with her dress the entire class.Crossing and uncrossing her legs the entire class period. She absolutely didn’t fit into the aesthetic of the crowd that had chosen an elective mechanics class, and it was clear the room agreed. 

It was a slack off class.Filled with burnouts and jocks who just needed a positive letter grade to make it onto the field. While most people probably assumed Ben was part of the ‘burnout’ category, Ben’s dad liked cars, and his mother insisted on him choosing less strenuous electives his junior year so he could prep for exams. But still, he couldn’t help but wonder why Rey was in here.She was sitting two rows ahead of him, “Jakson” being too far away from “Solo” alphabetically for his liking, and he stared as she played with her syllabus when she wasn’t playing her the hem of her dress. She was nervous. 

When the bell rang, Rey’s chair scraped against the floor as she scrambled to get out, only stopping slightly when Ben tried to catch her attention.

“Hey, again,” he said when her eyes widened with recognition.She must not have noticed he was behind her during the period. 

“Oh, it’s you!” 

Ben suddenly regretted stopping her in the first place.He had no plans for conversation passed the initial greeting and they both stood in uncomfortable silence as students passed them to leave the classroom. 

“How’s your first day?” slipped from his mouth, and it proved it be a good topic as she sighed in exasperation. 

“Excited for it to be over, I guess.There are so many people.”She rolled her eyes, clutching her papers close to her chest.“Your name was Ren, right?”

“Uh, Ben, actually,” He corrected, “Ren is just a nickname, so lovingly given to me by my classmates when the bottom part of the ‘B’ got cut off on a class list once.”He winced, not wanting to get too personal too quickly, “But either is fine.”

“But Ben is preferable.”

“…Yes,” he admitted.

“Well, too bad your name isn’t Ren.I hear some teachers sit alphabetically by first name,” she chuckled at her quip, but Ben actually contemplated how difficult it would be to legally change his name before brushing off his own lunacy. 

“Too bad your last name isn’t Solo,” he replied not thinking of any the implications at all.Her brow furrowed, and she gave an awkward sigh as she turned to leave the classroom without any further conversation.When she was out of earshot, he grabbed a fistful of his hair and grunted in anguish before throwing a fist against the wall.He’d had two opportunities and this one ended more horribly than the last.

“Solo!” The mechanics' teacher, Mr. Rook, shouted from his desk, “We talked about this, no more holes in the wall this year.” 

  

—

 

It was still an hour out from when anyone was supposed to arrive.They were expecting almost 500 people tonight, which was just over half of the graduating class. 

Rey found herself with the responsibility of placing name tags for the alumni near the main entrance and was surprised by how many names she didn’t recognize.These were people in the class two years ahead of hers, but, her being so close to Ben, she assumed that she would have known more of them.The school was so huge, it was amazing she could be in the same building as these people for two years and not come across them. 

She hadn’t really decided if she wanted him to show up or not tonight, but when Leia had told her he’d RSVP’d she hardly argued coming to help set up the whole event.Maybe some part of her did want to see him again.He’d disappeared almost ten years ago.Barely speaking to his parents after cutting her off completely. 

She reached Ben’s name in the stack of stickers and groaned.Whoever had had these printed clearly thought they had a sense of humor and put Ren Solo instead of his given name.  Now she thought herself lucky to be the one placing name tags because if he had shown up and seen this, he probably would have walked out without another word.Which, would be none of her business of course, but she’d hate for him to come all this way just to feel mocked at the front door.She grabbed a sharpie from the table and did the best she could to fill in the bottom part of the ‘R’ to make it look like the printer had gotten it right the entire time.It wasn’t perfect, but hopefully, he wouldn’t notice.

 

—

 

“Have you talked to that Rey girl at all?” Ben had at last built up the nerve to ask as he and Phasma were smoking behind the auditorium waiting for Hux to get out of whatever club he was running this day. 

“Not really after the first day,” she puffed and growled as an underclassman ran passed them.“She keeps to herself mostly.”

“Yeah,” Ben brought the cigarette to his lips again and breathed.He hadn’t been able to talk to her in school after that first day, but he was hoping someone in his circle was able to remain in touch after just a week.“She’s in my mechanics class, actually.”

“Oh? Mechanics? Really?”Phasma seemed just as surprised as he initially was.“She seemed so flowery, not a grease type of girl.”

“I think it’s an act, the flowery stuff,” Ben admitted, trying not to sound too interested in her actions, but Phasma was clearly catching on.“I mean, she always looks so uncomfortable in class.”

“I think you’ve got a crush.”She laughed, flicking him on the shoulder.“She’s out of your league, man, every straight guy in school is going to be all over the cute new British girl.”Ben knew Phasma was probably right. “But she is in all those crazy genius advanced classes like you and Hux are.”

“Really?” Ben perked up.That could be a topic he could bring up on a future occasion once he was passed the embarrassment from their initial meeting. 

“Yeah, she’s in the Freshman classes of course, but you at least have that in common.”She smiled, dropping her cigarette to the ground and stopping on it with her foot.“So you don’t deny it?”

“Deny what?”

“Having a crush.”

“I don’t know her,” Ben replied, which was true, “She’s pretty though…nice.”

Phasma snickered as she lit up another smoke. 

 

—

 

“He’s single if you were wondering.” 

_Caught_

Leia had popped up behind Rey as she was eyeing his name tag still.A stack of unplaced ones still in her hand.Rey jumped up out of her daze and began to place each card down as if she were never distracted. 

“I wasn’t wondering,” Rey lied, hoping Leia would move on to observe in setting up elsewhere. 

“He’s going to show up, he’s here, he landed a few hours ago.”Leia continued, grabbing a stack of the stickers from Rey to help her place them down.“He texted me.”

“Is he staying with you?” Rey asked.Despite Leia and her remaining in contact over the years, the topic of her son was a sensitive one for them both, and he rarely came up.But Leia had been there for her through everything, and they decided that just because they had lost Ben didn’t mean they had to lose each other. 

“Of course not, he’s got a hotel in the city,” Leia sighed, “But, baby steps I guess, he’s here.And that’s what is important.”

“Have you been talking more lately?” Rey knew this wasn’t the right time to be asking these questions, but they came out anyway.

“A bit more,” she managed to smile as she placed that last card down on the table.She put a reassuring hand on Rey’s back and a small laugh came out.“You look gorgeous tonight, Rey,” and she sauntered away to bother the caterers. 

Rey really regretted wearing a dress tonight. 

 

—

 

“Shove it, Dameron!”Ben shouted as he pinned the senior against the brick exterior of the school's courtyard.Poe only laughed at the intimidation as Ben felt his blood begin to boil. 

“Or what?” Poe teased, feeling awfully comfortable despite the position he was in,“You’ll tell your mom?She can only get you off the hook so many times.”

The quarrel started to gather a crowd and Ben got inches away from his face, fists clenching even tighter around the damned letterman jacket that gave him so much status.His eyes stung.He knew this was his fault.He shouldn’t have been there.He should have just kept to himself instead of fucking following her.He knew what it looked like.

“The whole school knows you're an asshole, you're doing nothing to help yourself there.” Poe shrugged, and the crowd laughed.He was putting on a damned show and he might as well have been doing a song and dance routine.Then he leaned in even closer, almost intimately, so his lips were just outside the shell of Ben’s ears, “do you really want them to know you're a creep, too?” 

“Hey! Put him down!”  _She_  shouted from the crowd as she pushed her way through.“Ben, what the hell are you doing?” 

The crowd quieted, to the point where you could hear a pin drop.The school day was over so Ben couldn’t pray for a bell to disperse them.He just looked down at the girl who was squared up next to him, not looking even the tiniest bit worried. 

“Hey Rey, I’d get away from him if I were you,” Poe said, as Ben released his collar, backing away with his hands in the air as if she had some sort of spell over him.Poe brushed himself off, and the disappointment of their peers was made obvious as they grumbled walking away after the lack of a confrontation. 

“Ben, what the hell was that?” She spat at him again, taking Poe’s arm and dragging him away from the wall, then guarding him with her own small body. 

“It was my fault, Rey,” Poe began and for a moment Ben thought he actually wasn’t going to tell her, “I caught him following you after class today, lurking behind walls and everything, heavy breathing all muttering to himself, I called him out and crushed his precious ego that you want nothing to do with him.”

Ben was sure this would be the moment he died. 

“Wh-What?” Rey stammered, turning her neck to face Poe who put his arms up in arrogance.

With a grunt of frustration, Ben threw down his bag and violently began shoveling through it. He pulled out a purple notebook and stood back to full height and tossed it at her chest. Rey fumbled to catch it and her mouth dropped slightly in surprise.“You dropped this after class.”Poe’s eyes widened at the realization and he began to shy away.Ben stormed off, not waiting for a response because while it was true that she had dropped her notebook during the day, he probably shouldn’t have noticed when she dropped it in the first place.He should have been on the opposite side of the school. 

 

— 

 

“Poe!” Finn’s wail could be heard from across the hall as his old buddy came into the room.The two ran dramatically towards each other and met in a powerful embrace that involved spinning that had Rose rolling her eyes as she helped place silverware.“I didn’t know you were coming!”

“I heard the whole gang was going to be here!”Poe laughed as he whirled around to try to spot his other comrades.“Rey!”The man ran up to her, not nearly as enthusiastically as his first encounter, but they still met in a cordial hug.

“Good to see you, Poe! You're making the trip worth it!”

“You're telling me! You didn’t bother helping out for my ten-year last year though, you missed out!” His smile softened a bit as he leaned in.In a whisper, he added, “I’m sorry to hear about you and Temmin.”

“Oh, no,” Rey shook her hands in front of her as to tell him not to worry, “it wasn’t meant to be, I guess.In the end, it was kinda a mutual decision.” 

“Still, I set you up, I feel bad.”

“Just… wasn’t meant to be.”

 

—

 

_'Rey was taking her time gathering her things after mechanics,'_ Ben thought to himself, or maybe everything she did was beginning to appear to him in slow motion.Like some sort of sick romance movie. She was wearing leggings today.A baggy t-shirt dress and black leggings underneath.She seemed more comfortable.The classroom filed out while Rook left to go clean up the shop and Ben sauntered up to her seat.

“Hey, I’m sorry about the other day,” he murmured, “I was really only trying to give your stuff back to you, I really promise that.”

“Poe said you were hiding,” Rey glowered, and Ben sucked in a quick breath. 

“I wasn’t… hiding,” Ben could have tried convincing Rey that Dameron had made that entire bit up to scare her, but he had been ducking behind a wall trying to figure out what to say to her when Poe finally confronted him.“I’m not good at talking to people I don’t know very well. I was kind of just figuring out what to say- ”

“You’re talking to me right now,” she said, attempting to call his bluff. 

“Trust me, if you knew how sweaty I was right now you’d believe me.”That somehow managed to make her laugh a bit, and he brought his hands out of his pocket to emphasize his sweaty palms.“It’s gross.”

“You’re right.”She said, observing him, and she may have actually smirked.

“Yeah, I’m all out of sorts most of the time,” he joked, but the truth was he may have been moments from passing out entirely. 

Then she reached up and placed her hand on his chest, right above his heart.If his heart wasn’t pounding before, which it was, it was now just going to fall out of his body.The act was so innocent on her part that she probably didn’t even realize what she was doing to him, or what someone might think if they walked through that door. She just stared at her hand for a few moments, seemingly oblivious to the fact that she was touching him and gave a snort of amusement.

“Your heart is beating like crazy.”Her hand fell from his chest and Ben had to stop himself from consciously reaching back for it. 

“Yeah, that’s like… all the time now,” he admitted, trying to cover.

“Maybe you should get that checked out.”She shrugged again as she swung her messenger bag over her shoulders.“And maybe next time you should be in the right hall for 7th period.But I suppose if you were… I wouldn’t have gotten my notes back.” 

She pushed past him without another word.The little half ponytail she wore swinging against his shoulder.Ben should have been mortified.He probably would be later.But right now all he could think about was that she had paid enough attention to him to know where he was supposed to be 7th period.

 

—

 

Maybe she wasn’t ready to see him again.She thought she would be.It had been ten years. An entire decade.Music and fashion had come and go. She’d finished college, started a career, had a decent apartment in the city where every day was new and interesting. 

So why was her forehead so _damn_ sweaty. 

She’d run into the bathroom around thirty minutes before the first guests were due to arrive to check her makeup to find that her whole face was glistening. She padded her features with a paper towel before going into her purse to pull out a small makeup bag to apply another layer of powder to try to dull the shine. 

“Rey?” It was Rose.She ducked into the bathroom and stood by her in the mirror.“Finn wanted me to check on you, are you alright?”

“Yeah… I’m fine,” Rey said, thinking she meant it for a moment, “I don’t know why this whole Ben thing has got me so worked up. I’ve moved on.”She had.Time and time again. 

“There’s always something different about the person you first fall in love with, I think.” Rose pondered, pushing herself up on the sink’s counter so she could face Rey as she attempted to fix her makeup. “You guys didn’t end well either.”  
  
_Didn’t end well? He just disappeared._ One fight and he-

Rey shook the thought out of her head.She was here to help Leia and see her friends.Ben may chicken out and decide not to show his face anyway, or maybe in a crowd of 500 people, she wouldn’t run into him.Maybe all of this was for nothing and it would just be another night.

_ She’d hate that.  _


	2. Chapter 2

“Ben!” The shrill yelp of his mother's voice echoed down the hall of their home and into his room.“Chewie’s coming over for dinner tonight, so look presentable!”

“Why?!” he yelled back, with no response.A few moments later Leia appeared in his doorway and he quickly closed his laptop. 

“Because I said so,” she said more calmly, with a cocked brow and crooked lip. For a woman barely five feet tall, she still terrified Ben to his core most days. 

“We haven’t seen Uncle Chewie in like a month,” Ben sighed, rolling out of bed to begin the shuffle through his closet for something Leia deemed ‘presentable’.

“He’s been busy.So we are having a nice dinner to catch up and meet the foreign exchange student he’s housing.”

He froze.Certainly, it was someone else.Of course, it was.There were other schools in the area and Chewie lived on the outskirts of town, maybe it was an exchange student from one of _those_ schools. It had to be.  
  
“Chewie has an exchange student living with him?”  
  
“I know, surprised us all too! But I guess now that Waroo is off living on his own, he missed having someone around the house.” 

“Do they go to Hosnian?” Ben said as he pretended to sort through different shirts, but his mind was so focused on that answer that he couldn’t focus on anything in front of him.

“She’s a Freshman.Chewie can’t speak highly enough of her. It’s so cute too-”

_Clank!_ a dozen hangers came crashing down as Ben knocked the rod while reaching up.He cursed quietly to himself as he fell to his knees to begin picking them up. 

“Ben!” Leia snapped, “Language.” 

“Yeah, sorry about that.” Ben gathered up an armful of the fallen hangers and began to re-sort them.“I…I think I know her.”

“Oh, really?” Leia sounded genuinely surprised, “In a school the size of Hosnian I doubted you two had ever crossed paths.” 

“She… she is in the same exchange program that Hux and Phasma are in…” Ben continued to stammer and the hint of a wicked smile crossed Leia’s face. “She’s also in my mechanics elective…”

“Oh, in that case,”his mother said, crossing over to him to help pick up, “you should wear this.”She pulled out a dark gray button-down from the pile and tossed it as his chest.

“No.”Ben frowned, hanging it immediately back on the rod.

“Why not?!”

“It will look like I’m trying too hard.”

“Or she may think you look handsome…”

Silence

“I don’t care about that.”

His mother giggled in a way that made Ben’s stomach twist, that, with the combination of the doorbell ringing, made Ben nearly wretch. 

“Get dressed and come downstairs.” Leia’s tone turned a little more strict as she stood to place some of the hangers back up. “Put on antiperspirant.”

“MOM.”

 

—

 

“Rey, are you sure you are okay?”Rose said as they walked out of the bathroom.Rey finally having gained enough composure that her face had mostly stopped producing sweat. 

“I will be,” Rey responded, closing her eyes and letting herself breathe for a moment. “It’s stupid, isn’t it… to be this nervous?I mean, it has been ten years.”

“No. It’s not stupid.” Rose shrugged but said nothing more. 

“Rose, if it’s alright, I’m just going to take a few more minutes to myself.”

“Of course!” her friend nodded and began to walk back towards the auditorium.“Just call if you need anything.” 

“Will do.” 

And when Rose was out of sight, Rey took a moment to look around.A place she vowed never to come back to after graduation.She didn’t hate it, really, but the ghosts of the past that haunted this school, this whole freaking town for that matter, and they never really went away. 

 

—

 

She was in his room.

It was just on a quick tour of the house that Leia insisted he give Rey when she walked in the door, but the fact remained.  _She was in his room._

“Does everyone in this town like… know each other or something?” Rey had asked when he had begun leading her throughout his home. 

“What?” Ben raised his brow, confused by the statement. 

“I mean, everyone keeps talking about how huge Hosnian Prime is, and when my host parent tells me were going over to his old buddies for dinner, I figured I’d meet someone new.” Ben wasn’t sure if she sounded disappointed or not,  but when he turned back to look at her she was slightly content looking. _(He hoped.)_

“You haven’t met my parents before tonight.They are new.”

“I suppose you are right,” she said with a slight chuckle as Ben turned a corner.

Ben opened the nearest door and Rey meandered in, mouth gaping at the sight.“Your house has a library?”

“It’s the best room in the house.”Ben even felt himself grin, “I know you just met them, but I’m sure you will figure it out soon, but my parents are.. a lot, so when I’m not holed up in my room, I’m in here.” 

Rey muttered something under her breath but before Ben could ask for her to clarify her expression changed and she said something new, “show me your room! I’m sure the bedrooms in this place are brilliant!” 

And now they were here.

She was in his _room_.

She was holding her hands behind her back walking in a slow circle around the space,looking around as Ben panicked that something unsavory of his character might reveal itself to her. He shouldn’t care this much.He shouldn’t.She was miles out of his league.But here she was, in his room, standing three feet from his bed. 

“Ben, are you alright?” She was facing him and again and Ben broke out of his fantasy.

“Y-yeah,” he sputtered, grabbing his own palms to discover that they had become particularly moist.

Still turned towards him she walked forward.Without a warning or a word she reached for him and put her hand on his heart, and that same damn sensation as the first time took hold. 

“Do all people make you this nervous?” she said, looking intently at her hand as she continued to feel his racing pulse. “Or is it just me?”

“Just… you.”

Her hand lingered, and her thumb ever so subtly brushed against the fabric of his button-up.Her cheeks began to pink when she let a small smile show through, “I like your shirt.”

—

Ghosts definitely roamed these hallways. Rey was convinced.They may not have been spirits of the dead, but the past was just as haunting at the moment.While the rest of the school was closed off for the reunion, Rey found herself aimlessly wandering down the abandoned corridors.The lights were off, and the sun had set, and all she could really make out were rows of lockers.She followed them, looking inside the window of each classroom to see if much really changed, and to her surprise, it hadn’t. 

After a few turns, she reached the place she was subconsciously looking for.

It was as if she could see him, still fit and a bit gangly, leaning against his locker with his arms crossed over his chest. The memory of him turned to face her and he lit up.Just as he always did when she met him there after school.The goofy little smile that she felt she saw too little but loved so much. 

This was the place where they met for the first time.The place they would childishly hold hands between class periods.The place they even received detention for showing too much ‘PDA’ before school.Their first kiss.Rey's cheeks grew warm at the memory and she let out a soft chuckle.How young and foolish they had been. She touched the metal briefly before her phone pinged in her purse. 

  
**Where are you? People are showing up!**

She didn’t realize how long her daze had lasted.  
  
**Sorry, Finn! Be right there.**

 

—

 

“Are you going to Homecoming this year, Ren?” Phasma asked as Ben, Hux, and she wandered to their usual stomping ground behind the school after last period. 

“When has he ever gone to a school function?” Hux retorted, “Let alone a school _dance_.”

“I don’t know, I just figured since he has a date in mind he might actually go."

“Wait, what?” Hux gasped in surprise, nearly dropping the cigarette pack while pulling it from his pocket.“Don’t tell me it’s Bazine again.”

“No! No way.” Ben said, recalling his Freshman year 'affair', in which he served as Bazine Netal’s aesthetic accessory for two months before she left him for some giant lug.Ben wasn’t too broken up by it in itself, it was clear she only liked how they looked together rather than him, he was mostly just humiliated by her choice of a public breakup in the middle of a school day, and Ben wasn’t one to hide his emotions well.“And no I don’t have anyone in mind,” he lied.

“He’s got a huge crush on the new exchange girl,”Phasma informed Hux instead.

“You and half the school,” Hux said, thankfully not taking Phasma’s admission very seriously. “She probably already has a date.”

“… Have you heard that?” Ben inquired after a second, and Phasma and Hux both exchanged knowing glances with matching grins. 

“No, but I also don’t keep track of the Freshman class’s homecoming dates.” 

“Speak of the devil!”Phasma exclaimed as Rey, with a small group, passed by as they headed towards the school’s soccer field.“She seems to be fitting in quite nicely here.Already in with the ‘right’ crowd.”

There was five of them together.Poe Dameron, the Tico sisters, and that Finn kid that Ben tutored last year.The guidance counselor had insisted Ben take on an extracurricular or two so he’d have something to put on his college transcript beside the fact he was smart, so she assigned him a freshman to tutor.Finn was that Freshman. 

The two, needless to say, did not get along.It made his gut churn to know that any stories of their ill-fated time together could have easily made it back to Rey by now.  And clearly, he and Poe didn’t have the greatest of relationships. 

_Who was he kidding_? 

She had befriended his personal attack squad.She barely spoke to him unless he had the courage to say something first while in the shop. It was never more than a few sentence exchange that had him sulking back to his own projects a minute later.No wonder his only two friends were Hux and Phasma, and he wasn’t sure they could even be considered that.They were just the only people who tolerated him, and vice versa. 

“Look out!” the older Tico sister, Paige, shouted as a soccer ball flew over the net they were scrimmaging on.The ball hit the ground just after the net and had gathered enough momentum to roll straight into the brick cove that Ben, Phasma, and Hux had been sorted against.

“I’ve got it!” Rey said after a moment when no one in her circle had volunteered, she began the light jog over and once again Ben swore he saw in slow motion until Phasma punched him in the arm snapping him out of it. 

He leaned over to pick the ball up from the ground just as Rey stopped in front of them.“Sorry about that,” she said, reaching her arms out.

“D-don’t worry about it,” Ben responded, passing the ball off to her, and she tossed it from hand to hand for a moment, seeming to stall, before beginning to turn around.

“Well... thanks,” she said after a few unbearable moments of silence. Phasma groaned. 

“Rey, are you going to homecoming this year?” She pushed in.“As a new student, it may be a good experience.”

“Oh! Well, I was thinking about it!”

“Have a date yet?” Hux said and Ben wished the world would swallow him whole.

“No, I was just going to go with my friends…”  Ben felt a wave of relief as Rey looked back at the soccer field who gazed over impatiently waiting for her return, “… are you going?” Her question wasn’t directed at anyone in particular but Hux and Phasma immediately eyed Ben. 

“As student council president, I’m sort of obligated,” Hux shrugged.“And Phasma will take advantage of any excuse to dress up in sparkles and wear heels.”

“It’s true,” Phasma gave a loud laugh, and Ben made the choice not the comment on the matter.Rey blinked a few times before looking over at him.

“What about you, Ben?”

In the attempt to compose himself, he scoffed, and Rey’s face immediately turned from interest to confusion. “You wouldn’t catch me dead at one of those, I think the whole concept is rather stupid…”

Her face turned from confusion to cross.“Why?”

“It’s just so shallow.And competitive.” _And embarrassing._ “It’s a bunch of people trying too hard to be something else, pretending like this one night will matter, and it’s all just empty and meaningless.”

Rey’s mouth dropped open for just a minute before she snapped it shut. “Well, it’s not meaningless to everyone." She began to take her leave before coming back with more.  "Some people have never had opportunities like this.  To dress up and have fun with your friends.  It can be special, no matter how below you and stupid you think it is.”She turned and sprinted back toward the field, her friends restarting their match once she drop-kicked the ball towards them.  Probably pretending it was his giant idiotic head.

“Smooth, Solo,”Hux muttered.

 

—  


 

Back in the auditorium, Rey took her place over by the punch bowl and began pre-filling some cups for people to take as they passed by. Leia was by the door greeting each of the promptly on time guests, which luckily for Rey, were very few, and all were people she was unfamiliar with. 

Leia, a year or so after Ben had left, had retired from her political career had found something a little closer to home.She’d taken the open super intendants job for the school district and Rey couldn’t decide if Ben would have preferred that or hated that even more than her absence.But she was wonderful at her job no matter where she was and she was the reason why alumn would jump at the chance to help out. 

While Rey was no exception to that, she had a different relationship with Leia.Her friends had known that when Ben left, and their relationship was decidedly over, that it was not on good terms.There had been no cordial handshake parting of the ways, and Rey hadn’t lied about that, but she also hadn’t ever been honest about the specifics.Leia was the only other person who knew what really happened, besides Ben himself. 

Leia had no obligation to sympathize with Rey after he had disappeared.Rey had no reason to go to her now that her son was out of her life, but neither of them had thought that was the right choice.They had cried together.Leia had held her just like she were her own mother.A sort of embrace Rey had never known and feared she never would until she met Leia. 

Despite everything. Through everything.She owed a lot to this woman, and could only dream of being half as strong as her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow! Thank you so much for the amazing response to the first chapter! It really pushed me to get out the second!! This was originally just going to be a one-shot, but I decided to break it up into chapters, and your response has been amazing! Thank you!


	3. Chapter 3

It was too damn early to be at school. The halls were empty and a disgruntled janitor had to let Ben in because the school hadn’t even properly opened yet. The lights were still off, but the sunrise through the windows had provided just enough that he could see the dial on his locker. He fumbled with the code twice before actually being able to open it and he began digging through his books.

“Shit. Shit. Shit.”

Maybe since it was the Monday after Homecoming the teachers would cut students some slack on their assignments. Rook would probably be lenient, but no way in hell would a teacher like Tarkin let a school dance be a good excuse for abandoned reading, especially when Ben didn’t even go to the damn thing.

He pulled out his economics book and began flipping through the pages to where he knew he left off, burying his face into his locker to try to guise his misfortune. He’d probably fail whatever quiz Tarkin would spring on them, it wouldn’t hurt his grade too much, but he shouldn’t have risked it. He needed to keep his grades up so the second he graduates he can get out of here. He can hopefully go to a school far away with a decent scholarship so he won’t have to ask his parents for anything. He’ll never have to come back here again.

“Hey,” a voice interrupted from behind, and it startled Ben so much that he slammed his head against the top of his locker. He hissed when brought his hand up to the swelling point and turned towards the speaker. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you!”

Of course, it was her. Oversized sweater and leggings. Hair half up and out of her face. Headphone pods hanging out of one ear as she looked down at her feet as she rocked back on her heels.

“You…. didn’t scare me,” he said, also looking away. They hadn’t really spoken since that whole incident on the soccer field and he had little idea to why she was speaking to him now. “You are here early.”

“Yeah… I forgot to bring home my English assignment.” She shrugged. “It was a pretty hectic weekend, I wasn’t thinking. What about you?”

“Economics,” Ben said holding up the book, and they both made eye contact for a brief exchange before glancing away, “how was Homecoming, by the way?”

“Fun!” she answered gleefully, her tone not quite matching her face, “I mean, mostly, I didn’t think going as a group with friends meant everyone secretly had a date without saying it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, Finn and Rose were too embarrassed to say they wanted to go together, so they kinda paired off at the dance, which left Paige and Poe to kinda go off and do their own thing because they are seniors, so I didn’t do much…”

“That sounds bad.”

“I’m making it seem worse than it was, they didn’t completely ditch me, I just felt like I was stopping them from having fun when they did come back for me.”

“Maybe next time, plan ahead, and bring a secret date as well,” Ben said and maybe noticed her blush a little.

“Yeah, maybe.” She grinned and looked at her music player.

“What are you listening too?”

“New Alliances. They are one of my favorite bands from back home.” She took one of the earbuds from her ear and without thought shoved it in Ben’s, pushing his hair aside. He felt his face heat up as the riffs were played and his head was pounding to the point he couldn’t even hear the music.

“They’re good right?”

He couldn’t focus long enough for an actual opinion, but he nodded in agreement.

Slowly, after putting her player back into her pocket, she lifted her hands and they hovered above his shoulders and connected them around his neck.

“You… could have asked me, If you wanted too, to Homecoming that is,” she said, softly, leaning into the embrace almost swaying as the music played. “Instead of being a jerk about the whole thing.” They were both quiet for a second, but for the first time, he had no intention of looking away from her from embarrassment. “You aren’t really… subtle…”

“I… I don’t think your friends would have been too happy about that,” his hands circled around her hips and rested on her back.

“So?”

She leaned her head against his chest and Ben was beginning to suspect she got off on feeling how nervous he was. He wasn’t sure if the rhythm in his head was coming from the music or his pulse as she pushed him to sway with her in something that could have maybe be considered a dance.

“I didn’t get to slow dance,” Rey mumbled with her cheek pressed against his shirt, “but there was no one I wanted to dance with, really.”

He let himself pull her a little closer and rested his chin on the top of her head. She fit so well there, tucked in beneath him. She smelled like a perfect combination of sunshine and rain and before he could think better of it, his thoughts spilled from his mouth.

“If…if I kissed you, would you hate me?”

She backed away slightly but didn’t move her hands. She didn’t respond, and Ben prayed for a moment that she didn’t even hear him, hell, he didn’t even know if he truly spoke. But then she was looking at him. Her eyes so glued to his that he couldn’t avert his own gaze. “No…”

“‘No’ you wouldn’t hate me? Or ‘no’ I shouldn’t-“

“I… wouldn’t hate you…” She interrupted, her damn eyes were making his knees feel weak.

He hadn’t really kissed a girl before, and now the opportunity was staring him in the face. Literally. When he was ‘with’ Bazine she avoided all physical contact unless it was for a couples selfie, in which she had instructed him once to kiss her on the cheek. Suddenly he was more self-conscious than he’d ever been in his life, aware of how large his nose was and if it would stop him from even reaching her lips if the angle was wrong, aware of his big mouth and wondered if he even knew how to move it correctly, but most keenly aware of another body part that he was desperately trying to keep under control when a girl had never been this intimate with him before.

He leaned in slightly, waiting for her to back away, and she didn’t. Turning his head, he moved inch by inch anticipating her to jump back. _Which she didn’t._ He was so close to her he could feel his own breathing bounce off her skin and back at him, and it was there he noted that she was holding her breath. Her eyes were still glued to him, nearly crossed by their proximity. She wasn’t running away or pushing him off, and he finally closed his eyes and closed the gap.

Her lips were the plushest thing he had ever felt and tasted like cherry or some sort of flavored lip balm, and his heart nearly shot through them both when he felt her begin to kiss him back. A little unorganized, a little clumsy, but mostly phenomenal. Her hands were shaking as they moved back into his hair as he was sure his were two as they held her waist.

“SOLO!” A loud fist crashed into the metal locker beside them and Rey jumped back ripping the earbud from Ben’s ear.

Administration Director Krennic, with exhaust in his eyes, stared back at them as Ben and Rey turned the deepest shade of red, hoping to disappear into the sunrise. After scribbling briefly on his notepad he handed them two slips of paper then groaned the word “teenagers” as he exited while more students began to filter in the halls.

Ben got detention and failed a quiz that day. And he wouldn’t have changed any of it.

  
—

  
“I think you’ve made enough punch.” Rey stood to attention to see Leia with her arms folded by the opposite side of the table. Rey glanced over to see she had prepared nearly 100 plastic cups and an alum passed her to take one.  
  
“Whoops,” she sighed, hoping that no one would knock the table and cause the auditorium to flood.  
  
“He’s just fashionably late,” Leia said, sensing Rey’s nerves, “he went home to say hello to Han before coming over.”

Rey was about to make a comment of surprise but decided against it.

“Yeah, I’m impressed too. Or maybe concerned?” Leia shrugged, but she was beaming. You could see the joy radiating off of her. She was moments away from holding her son in her arms even if in a brief exchange since it was a public affair, but it was different this time.

Leia had seen Ben over the years, rarely, and never under happy conditions. but now he was coming home willingly.  
  
“I would say impressed,” Rey joined Leia in the smile.  
  
A light ‘ping’ came from Leia’s pocket and she shuffled to grab her phone. The screen lit up face as she read the message and after a moment Leia looked back at up. “I’m going to meet him outside before he comes in.”  
  
_He’s here._  
  
“Do you want to come with me?” Leia almost sounded hopeful, but Rey felt her palms immediately begin to sweat.  
  
“Oh… no,” Rey sputtered nervously, needing to recompose again, focusing on the auditorium doors, “I’ll wait.”

  
—  
  


Needless to say, the rumor that two students were given detention for ‘hooking up’ before classes Monday spread like wildfire.The vague definition of ‘hooking up’ not being helpful in the slightest when it came to the speed it was spread. 

Rey and Ben’s names had thus far been omitted from the rumors, but still made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end when someone brought it up. When it happened again in shop class, Ben glanced over to Rey who had gone suddenly stiff at her station as she fiddled with some metal pieces.

“Seriously, they were screwing against the lockers, that’s what the detention slip said.” A big guy who couldn’t be bothered with his actual school work said from across the way.

“No, they were just making out!”Another girl chimed in. 

“Brance is in the AV club and said he saw security footage of the whole thing, she definitely gave the guy head.” Another added.

“if Brance saw it how come he doesn’t know who it was!”

_ Another. Another. Another.  _

Ben kept looking over at Rey who, by the looks of it, feared she would be found out if she moved too much.She stared intently at her scrap metal, either deep in thought or attempting to eavesdrop.

“Ren, you were in detention yesterday,” the first big guy said to Ben who cocked his brow, “Who else was there? Dameron? It totally seems like something Dameron would do.”

Before Ben could even dignify that with a response, or rather lack thereof, the bell rang and Rey dashed from the room.The other students filed out as well and Ben pushed passed them to find her, forgoing gathering his things for the time being. She quickly ducked beyond a corner and Ben, against his better judgment, followed.  
  
“Rey!” he said when he was close enough. She turned to him, books closely clung to her chest, with wide eyes. “Can…can we talk?”  
  
Rey looked around at the other students who passed by and stepped in a little closer, “can it wait?”  
  
“No-“ Ben said too quickly and Rey’s surprised look had him eating his words, “I mean, yes,” he quieted to a whisper, “it’s just gonna eat me up inside if we don’t talk now, and I just want to say I’m sorry.”  
  
“Sorry?” A worried expression crossed her face and Ben felt himself flounder further.  
  
“Yeah, for…this… If I had known all of this would have happened I wouldn’t have-“  
  
“You wouldn’t have kissed me?” She frowned and Ben knew he had said something wrong again.  
  
“No! That’s not what I’m saying… I wanted … I just maybe would have…not done it so out in the open”

“I’m glad you did it.” Rey stepped in again.

She stood on her toes and pressed a soft kiss to his cheek before landing back down."So don't apologize for that."

“People are really gonna know it was us now,” Ben said with a dopey smile as he looked around at a couple of onlookers who quickly glanced away as if they didn’t see anything.

“I decided I don’t think I mind.” She grinned.

  
  
  
__

 

 

Leia had been gone for only five minutes and Rey was doing everything in her power to look anywhere besides the entryway to the reunion.Her stomach churned as she paced around the refreshments table pretending to look busy as the crowd continued to fill in.

But in a single moment, the air changed.She didn’t know what or how that happened, but it did.He was in this room, she knew it without even seeing him, and all she had to do was look up, and her pulse stopped. 

“Solo!” A deep voice exclaimed.

Before Rey could even catch his eye, Ben was swarmed by an onslaught of classmates. All people who would have never given him the time of day back when they were in school.Rey supposed Ben Solo had become a bit of a legend after graduation, and rumors about what happened to him ranged from “he joined the military” to “he was the secret heir to a European throne and left to rule a country”, of course, none of them were true, and it shook Rey to her core when people questioned her about it. She would have thought ten years would have silenced such ridiculous sounding rumors, but by Ben’s gestures and bemused expression, Rey could only assume that they hadn’t. 

He looked… different.But also strangely the same.  
  
He was broader now and still stuck up a few inches from the crowd around him. His hair was longer, more nicely groomed, and he even dressed up for the occasion. Tilting her head, Rey continued to observe him as he continued to be everything and nothing that she expected. With her hands over her heart to try to calm it, she struggled to find any words that could explain what she was feeling.  
  
“Ben…” she felt his name fall from her lips, in just a whisper so soft that she wasn’t even sure she said it, but as if he could somehow hear her Ben turned his eyes away from his former peers and they darted around slightly until they landed on her.  
  
And at that moment all the time that had passed disappeared and they were just two kids who were too young.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the small delay in the update. I'm gonna do a second edit in the morning of this chapter, but I wanted to post it tonight! 
> 
> Thank you SO much for the overwhelming response to this fic. Your words are always so appreciated. I hope you enjoy this addition!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait guys! But we're back at it :D  
> Note: We have a tag update just in case anyone is uncomfortable with the subject!  
> I just want to thank you so much for the support on this fic, it really is so much fun for me to write, and your comments really helped push me through this update.

Of all places Ben Solo thought he would be spending his Saturday night, it would not be awkwardly hovering outside Poe Dameron’s house with the intention of going inside. 

“Come on, Ben, It won’t be that bad,”Rey chided, as Ben slowly began walking away from the house, the heavy bass coming from within not exactly Ben’s type of welcoming. 

“I know you are new here, but you have been a first-hand witness to Poe’s and my relationship,” Ben groaned, putting his fingers into his hair.  "This won't end well."

Rey trotted to his front and put her hands up to his chest to stop him from wandering away any further. “You promised!” she pleaded.   
  
“It’s probably a trap, Rey,” Ben said, gazing back at the house, and even though he wasn’t facing Rey he could feel her rolling her eyes.“I’m serious.”

“Look.I like them.They like me.And I like you.” Ben looked down at Rey as she poked his sternum. “They were trying to do something nice by inviting you. Why can’t you be nice and accept the invitation?"

Ben pursed his lips in search of a response but all that came out was a muddled ‘imano’ and a childish shrug.

“It’s a party without supervision. They probably won’t even notice you anyway.”

Ben wasn’t quite sure if he should take those as words of comfort or an insult but he let out a long sigh before pinching between his brows.“I can’t guarantee I’ll last here long.”

“Well, either you come with me, or I’m going inside without you.”At this point, she backed away and swept out her arm to give him the choice to walk away, leaving her alone at a high school party. 

He didn’t want that either.

What he wanted was for the two of them to be alone watching some movie on his couch while they spent a significant part of said movie kissing because he finally felt like he was getting the hang of it.But instead he was outside Poe Dameron’s house, where the opportunity for kisses was slim to none, but he nodded and Rey lit up with a giant smile. 

“Thank you!” 

Needless to say, that was easier said than done.The second they walked into the house, Rey scampered off to greet her friends (expecting him to follow) while he took a detour to find the nearest source of alcohol. 

Ben was not a stranger to the substance, as he was a big fan of his parents' liquor cabinet when they were gone, but he wasn’t quite familiar with social drinking.A few people were already acting a little too sloppy around the house, but Ben just needed something to take the edge off, while also giving him something to do with his hands.He found his way to the kitchen, grabbed a red plastic cup plastered with his last name, and filled it full of a red liquid in a large punch bowl.Bringing it to his face, his sniffed it, and sighed with relief as it most definitely alcoholic.He didn’t care what it was. He took a swig of the stuff, and it wasn’t horrible and it certainly would serve its purpose. 

“For someone who was so afraid of coming in you sure ran off quick,” Rey said, magically appearing at his side.She frowned at the cup in his hand and Ben hadn’t even thought about if Rey would mind him drinking.

“You drink?” she asked.It had never come up before.It’s not like he could order a beer at a restaurant or anything, and he didn’t have the need for it when they were just sitting at one of their houses. 

“Oh, not a lot,” though it wasn’t a total lie, he still felt like he hadn’t told her the truth. 

She pondered his answer, and held out her hand, “can I try?”

Poe Dameron swooped in at a good moment for once and swatted her hand down. “No alcohol for the underclassmen.House rules.”

“Don’t I get an exception because I’m British?” She smirked, but she looked partway relieved, “back home we can drink at 16… with adult supervision.” She had mumbled that last part. 

“You are on our turf now, Rey.”Poe smiled and his natural charisma had sent Ben a feeling of jealousy through his bones.“Finn and Rose are on lockdown too.Keep an eye on her, Ren.”Poe turned towards him, acting like they hadn’t just been threatening each other a few weeks earlier, before strutting off to enjoy his other guests. 

“See, he’s being nice,” Rey said, not seeing through the facade, but the last thing Ben wanted to do was fight with her tonight.So instead of a retort, he refilled his cup and busied his mouth with the liquid so he didn’t say anything stupid. A trickle of warmth hitting his blood. 

Rey was social.Well-liked. 

He… was not. 

Rey went from person to person, engaging in pleasant conversation, relating to each person with laughter and joy in a way Ben couldn’t even imagine doing. 

Maybe Rey was happier in scenes like this.Lots of people to jump between and converse with, and she would eventually find him boring.Maybe she already did.It may have been the alcohol or his nerves, likely it was a combination of the both, but he needed air. Rey was in mid-conversation with Rose on Poe’s couch when Ben bolted from the room and out the front door.The cool quiet air being the only cure for his loud head (and awful music).

He collapsed onto the porch steps up and leaned over his legs, everything around him just slightly spinning. After a few breaths of silence, he heard the front door open and close, and even though his view was hidden, he sensed that someone sat next to him.  Turning his head just slightly, he saw her profile as she looked up at the sky.She was so beautiful. There was no reason for her to waste her time with him.

“Why do you even like me, Rey?” he asked, blinking to try to focus on her.

“What?”She looked down, seemed to be brought out of a daze. 

“Why do you like me? Why do you want me here? I’m clearly not cut out for this.”

Rey’s eyes widened as if she was surprised her feelings were questioned, then her brow furrowed as she searched her mind for a response, “I don’t know.”

That wasn’t what he wanted to hear.He wasn’t a relationship expert, but he was pretty sure most couples knew why they liked each other.As concern crossed his face, Rey quickly looked for something else to say.

“I don’t mean it like that!” She shuffled closer to him. “I mean, it’s different from what I’ve felt before, and I still don’t know how to explain it.The first time I was at your house, and you told me that you only get nervous around me, it’s silly, but I felt special, I never feel special, or thought I wanted too, and since then I just felt different around you. Unlike I’ve ever felt... so,I can’t explain it.  Not yet.  Sometimes it kind of scares me.”

“Oh.”

He should have told her that affection is nothing to be afraid of.He should have told her that he feels the same way.But his slightly tipsy self just leaned forward and kissed her, harder than he ever had before.Cupping her face in his hands, he took in every moment of tasting her lips and when he finally back away, he wrapped her in an embrace, never wanting to let go. 

  
—

 

Rey's mouth dropped.She wanted to mouth something to him from across the room, a simple ‘hello’ would have sufficed, but instead, she just gaped at him like a fish out of water, but it wasn’t like he was handling it much better.The classmates around him kept poking and prodding at him in an attempt to have a conversation but his attention was elsewhere.Not a single word was being absorbed. 

While he was drowning in former classmates, she was suddenly drowning in memories.Nearly two years of them flooded her mind and every emotion that came with them.The time they borrowed Han’s car so Rey could practice for her driver’s test,that summer at his house when she realized she 100% did not know how to swim and it was not as easy as it looked, their first… well, their first everything.

These memories should have faded now.They should have been just pictures in her brain that didn’t swallow her mind whole with emotion.She kept looking at that boy in front of her, who was so similar but brand new, and just the fact that a tiny part of him was unfamiliar to her broke her heart. 

That’s when she realized he was waiting for her to give him permission of some sort.He was the one who left.He needed to know if it was okay to go to her.But she was too shocked to give him that, a simple wave or smile to tell him it was okay. 

He finally broke eye contact with her and acknowledged the people who surrounded him.They joyfully slapped him on the shoulder as if they were lifelong friends, and a man grabbed him by the arm and started pulling him away to a corner of the party where a big group had gathered, blocked from a good view with decoration. 

 

— 

 

Since Ben’s relationship with Rey was made clear to her host father, Ben became public enemy number one in her household.Chewie had imprinted on Rey as if she was his own daughter, and even though Ben had been essentially a nephew to the giant hairy lug for his entire life, he was also a teenage boy that wasn’t allowed out of his sight when they hung out at Rey’s house.  
  
Luckily for him though, Ben’s parents were never home. 

_ Not that they were doing anything scandalous anyway.  _

But doing homework at the kitchen table was a lot easier without a seven-foot beast breathing down your neck. 

Rey had spread all her books across the table, all on different pages as she furiously marked them with highlighters.It was almost finals of her first semester and by the way she chewed on the tip of nearly every pen in the house, it was clear she was overwhelmed.With a sharp grunt, she flipped her notebook off the table and dropped her head onto the countertop.

“… are you okay?” Ben asked, putting his own pencil down on the opposite side of the table. 

“No.” she groaned into her arms.

“Do you need help?”

“No,” she said with conviction, almost as if she was upset that he asked. 

“I took these classes when I was a freshman, I can help.”Rey was in the same advanced courses that Ben had been in, and he’d actually looked forward to the day where she came to him for help.He wanted to be helpful to her in some way.  Since he often felt lacking. 

“I’m fine.” 

“Did... did I upset you?” Ben asked, his gut twisting in nerves, “I didn’t mean to say anything wrong.”

“You didn’t.I just don’t need your help,” she growled, lifting her head back up and glaring back down at a book. 

“Let’s just take a break or something, my parents left me money for pizza-“

“I need to finish this, Ben.”

“We can work on it after-“

“Just stop.”Something in her voice cracked and he took the hint to shut up. Ben got up from his seat and crossed over to her, even though every fiber of his being was telling him to stay away, and give her space, that crack in her voice was too familiar to be left alone. He knelt by her, waiting for her to push him away as he noticed a tear fall down her cheek.“I don’t want to go back.”

“Wha-“ Ben started before he realized what she meant.Rey was an exchange student.Which meant that she’d have to go back home one day.Hux and Phasma had somehow extended their stays, but it was never a guarantee. 

“If I don’t do well, there is no way the program will…”  
  
“Rey, you are brilliant,” he said, putting a hand on her knee, “and I know you want to do everything yourself, and you can, but you have me too to make it easier.”

She tucked her head even further into her arms, to muffle a short sob. 

“I’ve been through this before.I want to help.”He scooted closer to her and gave his best attempt at a comforting smile.“And if possible, I want you to stay even more than you do.”

Rey lifted her head slightly and the corners of her mouth twitched in an almost smile as she grabbed her notebook off the floor, flipping to a page filled with numbers and scribbles, and turned back towards Ben.“I need help.”

 

  
  
—

 

He was out of sight.Taken away to some corner of the crowd that she couldn’t even see the top of his head anymore.Rey had to keep reminding herself that she was in fact, an adult, and not a heartsick teenager who pined over boys from across a high school auditorium. 

“Rey!” Finn broke her out of her fog, joining her by the drink table.“Did you see him?”

For a moment Rey thought about asking who he was talking about, but who was she kidding, they both knew exactly who she was waiting for.“Yeah… just for a second…”

“Did you talk to him?” he pried, and Rey gestured to herself. 

“I can’t just leave my post! He’ll have to come to me!” She knew that was a lame excuse, she just wanted a reason not to be the one to approach him first, and Finn knew that immediately. 

“Come on, Rey, I think the punch can go unsupervised for a few minutes.” 

“Hey, we all know at this school, the punch cannot go unsupervised.” Which was probably the first valid thing she’s said since Finn came over to her, but saying someone spiking the punch right about now would be a much-needed blessing for Rey, she shouldn’t be bringing it up. 

“How about I hold down the fort, and you-“

“Finn.” Rey stopped him and his eyes widened. 

She just wasn’t ready.Maybe she never would be. Maybe she should just call a car and go home, and hide under a blanket and cry off all the stupid makeup that she put on for some reason.But Finn’s wide-eyed expression didn't leave him, and Rey assumed it had been a reaction to her, but his eye line was not on her but passed her, and she turned around to face exactly what she expected.

“Hi.” 

There he was. Hunched over, hands shoved in his pockets.Almost as awkward as when they had first met. Rey had noticed when he first walked in that he was broader, but it wasn’t until now that she realized how large he was.  How was he even taller.Even over the dull thrum of the music that now filled the room, Rey swore the nervous gulp she gave was heard by every single person there. 

“Ben.” Apparently, the only word she was able to say while looking at him.  Anxiously , he chewed on his lip but in such a familiar way that it had her longing to run to him, but instead, she just wrapped her arms around herself.

Finn took the hint and ducked from the scene.He patted Rey on the back as she tried to fix her dumbfounded look and gave Ben a knowing nod.But once he was gone Rey wished he was back, dissipating some of the awkwardness. 

“Hi,” he repeated.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay guys, on a scale from 1 to 10, how fluffy do you want this fic ending. Cause the angst is about to get real.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The response to this fic/latest chapter has been astounding! I don't think I've ever written a chapter this quickly hah! I hope I can keep this up.
> 
> Note: Please be aware of tags as we get deeper into the story.

Some movie had been playing, but for no prize in the world could Ben Solo remember what it was.But he did know that there was a beautiful, perfect, brilliant girl sitting in his lap kissing the very soul out of him, his hands gripped so tightly around her waist that he was sure he was actually hurting her, but her enthusiasm didn't waver.

Rey got her extension.And Ben sure as hell wasn’t going to say no to letting her take out her excitement on him on his couch.Chewie had said he was more than willing to host her for as long as she wanted to stay in America, and everything seemed to be working in Ben’s favor for once. 

She began to lightly grind her thighs against him and started to work her tongue into his mouth and... that was new.At least, new in the way that this time it actually felt right.Her hands cradled his face so tightly that it kept him from backing away for air. Thankfully, he was wearing jeans that day and she didn’t seem to notice the excitement she roused in him, or maybe she just didn’t mind. They had been moving slowly in the physical department, not that Ben would have ever mentioned it, because he was still astounded that she was attracted to him enough to kiss him.She would let him know when she wanted more.He was perfectly content with this. 

Letting her hands drop from his face to her sides, she lightly grazed the backs of his fingers.Coaxing them gently to slide lower onto her hips.Ben lost focus for a moment when he realized what she was trying to get him to do, where she wanted his hands, and slowly began to obey.Very slowly, in case she wanted to change her mind.She let a small sigh into his mouth and just when he was about to fully reach her backside a door slammed nearby and Ben nearly threw Rey off of him and she almost tumbled onto the floor.

“Ben?” His mother’s voice called out as she entered the den in which he and Rey had been in. 

Ben grabbed a throw pillow from the couch and threw it over his upper thighs and Rey giggled nervously as she repositioned herself on the couch to look more casual.Not that it fooled Leia Organa for a second.She looked at her son with a raised eyebrow as he tried to fold over on himself, praying to disappear into oblivion.

“Mom, you’re home early,” he mumbled, pretending to be focused on whatever was on TV.

“I got out on an earlier flight,” she glanced over at Rey who waved slightly, then back at her son, “I brought home some dinner if you want any.”

“Okay.” He was mortified. It’s not like she walked in on them doing anything R rated, that was a weak PG-13 at best, but it was still nothing you ever want your parents seeing.

“Rey, you are more than welcome to stay if you would like!” Leia’s suspicious tone dissipated with her offer.“It’s just me and Ben tonight, and there is more than enough food.”

“Oh, thank you, Ms. Organa.” Rey stood from the couch. “But I should really get home…”

Ben pouted as Rey hurriedly gathered her things from the floor, and she slid past Leia in the doorway, whispering a small ‘goodbye’ to Ben as she left.

Leia followed Rey out to give her son a moment to himself and called him in the kitchen once she had set up a row of Thai to-go containers along the counter.She was uncharacteristically quiet while Ben filled his plate, especially given she’d been gone for nearly a week.As Ben was about to dash towards his room to eat in peace, Leia tapped the seat next to her at the dining table, signaling she’d like the company and he hesitantly obliged.

For a few normal moments, the air was only filled with the sound of forks on plates, until his mother decided to ruin that.

“So, are you and Rey…. intimate?” Leia said, lifting a forkful of pad thai into her mouth as if she had only asked how school was going.

“Mom!” Ben nearly yelped.

“I think we should talk about it if you are,” Leia kept her tone calm, and that almost made it worse. 

“Even if we were, I’m not talking to you about this.” Ben began to pick up his plate and carry it to his room, but his mother kept talking.

“Well, if you aren’t talking to me about it, I think you should talk to someone.” The calm facade broke and her real intention broke through, Ben’s body shuddered and he dropped his plate on the floor.Food splattered across the hardwood but Leia did not react, she only had one concern.

“I don’t need to see a shrink to have a girlfriend.”

“Ben, I’m just suggesting it,” her voice became solemn, and Ben hated her for how she thought about her next words, knowing exactly what she meant to say but refusing to speak it out loud, “I just don’t want to see you do something you aren’t ready for.”

Silence. 

_ He hated her.  _

He would have thrown his plate if it weren’t already on the ground.It took everything he had to keep his fists at his sides instead of throwing them through a wall.

“I’m not hungry.”And he stormed off.

 

—

 

It had been quiet for far too long.He’d greeted her not once, but twice, and she still debated how exactly she wanted to greet him back.Nothing seemed fitting.He stood across the punch table from her, shoulders still hunched, squinting slightly as if afraid he was already being pushed away and Rey finally knew what to say.

“I can’t believe you are here.”

He grinned at hearing her say more than one word, but it fell immediately, “in a good or ‘how dare you show your face’ kinda way?”

“Good way.Most definitely good way.”She still couldn’t quite manage to get her voice much above a whisper, but he still heard her.

“I can’t believe I’m here either, to be honest.”He looked around the room and gestured to the gathering.The old jocks were downing drinks with low pitched hollers, the former burnouts hugging the walls in small huddles, and everyone else was falling into their same old assorted cliques. “This is so strange, it’s like no one is any different.”

She hoped she was different.In some ways.

“You’re different,” she said, not truly meaning for the words to escape her mind and she quickly tried to cover, “I mean, look at you, you're like twice the size!”

He laughed and the sound was so damn charming it made her knees weak.

“Once again, I must ask, in a good way or a ‘you’ve gotten fat’ way?”he teased, knowing well what she meant.

“In a fit way.” 

Normally she would have been embarrassed to admit that, but there was no denying it.

He smirked, in the way that always solidified that he was his father’s son, and grabbed a plastic cup from the table.“You look nice too,” he said, taking a small sip of the juice, but being very conscious of only looking into her eyes.

“Thank you.”

“So the weather’s been ni-“ Ben began to fill the silence when Rose, being no stranger to bad conversations, swooped in to intervene, as if she had been waiting for things to go wrong from the shadows.

“Ben!” She pretended to act surprised to see him, perhaps overacting a bit. “It’s been so long!”

All three of them stood motionless in their spots and Rose groaned, “Finn and I are trying to get people onto the dancefloor, you guys should join!”

Rey immediately went to refuse for the both of them when Ben held out his hand over the table.Before she could reject Rose, Ben extended the offer, “What do you say?”

 

— 

 

It had become the much awaited summer, or rather, warm enough outside that you actually wanted to be outside.There were two weeks left in the semester and Han had coerced Ben into helping him uncover and clean the pool they never used for the season.

“You should have some friends over this summer, get some use out of this thing,” Han said, scooping a glob of muck out of the water leftover from the summer before. Ben ignored this attempt at conversation as he tried to fold the giant tarp that had shielded the pool during the winter months.

He didn’t hate his father all the time.In fact, if the man wasn’t his father, he’d probably admire him in some way. Han Solo, the legendary pilot, certainly had some good stories that had been entertaining as a child but as Ben grew he realized that is all they were; stories.Han Solo was a man who loved travel and exploration, but those were things he liked doing alone.Alone after he and Leia had gotten into some fight and he wanted to remind her that she loved him.By leaving.Ignoring that fact he had a son in the process of his dramatics. 

“Come on, kid, if I had all of this when I was your age I’d never stop taking advantage of it.”

Han had come from very little and worked (and married) himself into a lot. 

_‘Too bad he wasn’t home enough to enjoy it.’_

“Maybe,”Ben replied, hoping that would satisfy his father’s inquiries.

“You have a cute girlfriend, live in a house with a private pool, and a personal hot tub, and have never taken advantage of it.Teenagers sure have changed since my day.”Han came over and ruffled Ben’s hair like he was an infant and sauntered off to change the filter. 

“Maybe I’m just not you,” Ben muttered to himself once his father was out of earshot.

But sure enough, his father’s words did have the appropriate effect because the next weekend Rey was sitting poolside with him in a giant white t-shirt. Ben, on the other hand, was bare-chested and extremely aware of it.

He’d never been so naked around her, and though she seemed totally unaffected by it, he was painfully alert of every freckle and mole that graced his skin, and he waited for the excuse to finally get in the water so he could feel a little less on display. 

Once the heat became a little uncomfortable he slipped off the pool's edge and into the water, wondering if he looked any less skinny in the distortion of the waves, “You want to come in?”

“How deep is it?” Rey dipped her toe in the water, with a worried expression.

“8 feet?” Ben guessed by the fact he had to kick slightly to stay afloat and Rey’s expression worsened.“There is a shallow end on the other side though.”

“Oh!” She expressed and she stood to shuffle to the opposite side of the pool while he swam alongside her.Carefully, she descended one step into the pool, with her t-shirt still on, and shivered at the chill.

“Are you going to keep the shirt on?” Ben asked, only becoming aware of how creepy that sounded after the words had left him.

“I don’t really have any swimming clothing,” Rey admitted, grasping on to the hem of the shirt.“I just have gym shorts and a sports top.I’m not sure if that’s weird.”

Ben considered his next words, to seem as natural as possible, “It’s more than most swimsuits, I don’t think it’s strange.”

Her mouth pursed in hesitation and then she lifted the shirt over her head, tossing it aside.

Ben chewed his lips.The sun illuminated her in such a way that it was as if she were a goddess appearing for him to grace him with salvation.She tugged at her shorts that had ridden up some, but they hugged her hips and curves in such a beautiful way that he knew he was staring a little too obviously.He was just about to admire how cute her stomach was when she submerged herself in the water. Standing back up as soon as she was completely wet, the water came up to just above her breast.

She looked panicked even though her feet were clearly planted on the ground.Ben bounced over to her and instinctually she leaped into his arms.Wrapping her arms and legs around his body so quickly that surely it the most physical contact they’ve ever shared given their state of undress and Rey didn’t even seem aware of it.In fact, she seemed to relax as soon as she was wrapped around him, giving herself a few more inches above the water.

“Not that I’m complaining,” Ben started, letting his own hands settle on his waist, “but are you afraid of the water or something?”

“No,” she said, looking suspiciously at the water around her. 

“Rey,” the corners of his mouth raised in a smile,“can you not swim?”

She just laughed at the question and shrugged, “am I that obvious?”

“Did your parents never take you to a pool growing up?” He laughed but she twitched in his arms and he knew he had said something wrong as her light faded.

“I guess not.” She tried to shrug it off and move on, but her mind was elsewhere.She looked as if she was debating something within herself and then Rey locked eyes with him. Her brow became focused and her grasp around his shoulders loosened.

“Ben, I didn’t… I don’t really have parents.” Her gaze did not break.The conviction in her voice seemed to be more for herself than his benefit as if it was something she was trying to convince herself.

“What?” Ben should have assumed something of the sort.In the past almost nine months he had known her and been her boyfriend, she’d never mentioned a mother or father. She’d briefly address the cultural difference between England and America, but never did she ever talk about her life before she moved.  A pang of guilt at his own selfishness hit him. How had he never noticed?  
  
“I… I suppose at one point I did, but I was raised in Foster care,” Rey stuttered, “and I wanted to tell you sooner, but it’s… not my favorite subject, and I didn’t want you to feel like you had to…”Her speech became quick and nervous, and once Ben noticed her voice waver he leaned forward to kiss her. She cupped his jaw so quickly to draw him closer that it made his heart skip a beat.When he backed away, slowly, a single tear ran down Rey’s cheek, but she smiled.

“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. If you aren’t ready,” Ben whispered, the words echoing in his own ears in an unsettling fashion.

“It’s alright.I’m here now.And I get to stay.” The hug of the water around them had never felt so comforting.“They’re gone, and I’m here, and so are you.”

 

—

 

Ben had never been much of a dancer, and it had been clear that his invitation to dance was more an excuse to touch than anything else.

Rose gladly had helped opened that door. _Not that Rey minded_.Once they had made it onto the dance floor, hand in hand, Rey pressed her cheek against his chest as he wrapped his arms around her waist, her arms slipping underneath his as the music filled in the room.The other couples began to pair off, including Finn and Rose a few feet away. 

Leaving Ben and Rey. They had other more pressing matters to address, sure, but this was the priority, just finding the other and seeing that they were okay, and celebrating that in an embrace since words were never their strong suit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again for the amazing support, as our two reunite in the future, that means their past is about to end.
> 
> Originally this was supposed to be a 10k one shot. I can't believe I thought I could fit this all in 10k! Now we are looking to be at about 25k. (Perhaps a sequel fic afterward? Maybe? We'll see how you guys feel!!)


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some Mature stuff happens here, so as always, be mindful of tags.

As far as that party Han insisted on Ben having, it happened very suddenly without any sort of permission and it was bound to not end well.

_“You should have people over!” Rey had insisted earlier that week while Ben and her friends shuffled through a rundown bookstore that she had begged on checking out. “Your dad said it would be okay, right?”_

_“That’s not happening.” Ben picked up a used book and flipped through the pages mindlessly, coughing at the dust that flew from it as he did so.Poe and Finn walked aimlessly behind Rey as they waited for her to finish browsing._

_“Why not? It could be one last summer hoorah before school starts and before Poe leaves for college!”Rey opened her eyes wide and looked at him with a pleading expression._

_Poe perked up at the sound of his name.“What about me?”_

_“Ben’s house is super nice,” Rey started, “they have this really amazing pool and hot tub, and his dad said he could have a party sometime… it would be nice to all gather one more time before you and Paige leave for school!”_

_Rey still didn’t quite understand that Ben didn’t love her friends as much as she did.He only put up with them for her.He wasn’t about to throw parties for them.Ben didn’t even like his own friends that much._

_“It’s not happening Rey, both my parents are gone this week, they won’t be back before school starts”_

Apparently, the only words Poe had heard were the fact his parents weren’t home and now his house was filled with half-dressed teenaged strangers. Wet footprints made their way from the backyard to the kitchen where ‘peers’ that Ben didn’t even know were trying to break into his parents' liquor cabinets.

“You can tell them to leave,” Rey said, following softly behind him as Ben paced around his house. 

“I know.” 

Then Dameron showed up in the doorway after a quick errand run, the light behind him illuminating him like a God, holding as many six-packs as one man could carry.Which was surprisingly a lot.He lifted them into the air with a victory howl like he had just won the world cup then fled to the backyard.

“Great. Alcohol and a giant cement bowl of water. What could go wrong?” Ben groaned as he began to follow the stragglers, who had made their way inside, out to follow the beer. 

“Ben.Just tell them to leave, ” Rey suggested again. “I’m not going to be mad, I think it was kinda a dick move for Poe to plan this without telling anyone.”

“Well, actually the problem is he told _everyone_.” 

He and Rey were supposed to have a nice day just to themselves.It was one of the last days of summer, and while Rey had friends who were leaving for college, Ben had no need to celebrate their departure.(Well, he’d celebrate it differently.) 

Weaving her fingers through his, she dragged him over to the poolside chairs.She placed her hands on his shoulders, pushing him down in an attempt to get him to sit and relax before he spontaneously combusted in frustration. 

“Say the word and I’ll kick everyone out.” Rey loomed over him, crossing her arms to signify that she meant business.  It was adorable.

“Thanks…”  Ben extended his arms as a silent invitation for Rey to join him on the chair, and she obliged, nuzzling into his shirt.Ben wasn’t quite dressed for a pool party, choosing to wear a grey tee and jeans, but Rey had changed into a halter bikini and small cotton gym shorts.His arms slid around her waist and then he closed his eyes.The blaring music faded and Ben finally relaxed a total of 5% before a voice brought back that anxiety tenfold.

_“Wow, you two are still together?”_ Ben peeked to see that Bazine had taken the chair next to them.Stretching out like a cat in the sun, a huge pair of sunglasses hiding the disdain in her expression. 

“Yeah! Almost ten months,” Rey replied, shifting towards Bazine, not hearing the sarcasm and thinking it to be the beginnings of a pleasant conversation.“I don’t believe we’ve formally met, by the way, I’m R-“

“I know who you are,” Bazine snapped, and Rey’s eyes widened as she looked at Ben for an explanation of sorts.

“Don’t bother, Rey, she’s just trying to get a reaction from you,” Ben whispered, even though it was clear Bazine could still hear him. 

“I must say, Solo, I’m surprised.I thought after Dameron came out you’d follow shortly behind.”Ben flinched at the taunt, forcing himself to listen to his own advice, but he and Rey instantly shifted to get out of the chair.“Though even in a bikini top she looks like a boy, so I guess she’s a good beard for the time being.”

“Do you have a death wish?” he snapped, putting Rey behind him as if him shielding her with his body could shield her from words.  
  
“No, I’m just speaking my concerns.When you and I dated-”

“We didn’t _date_.” Ben finally broke as they started to walk away, Rey’s shoulders hunched forward as he continued to block her from Bazine’s eye line. “We pretended like we liked each other and you clearly weren’t actually interested-“

“That’s not how I remember it,” Bazine scowled, but something about the way her brow twisted almost made her question seem sincere, and Rey pushed herself away. 

 

 

—

 

After the first song ended, and their first ‘dance’ of the evening came to a close, Rey leaned back, effectively removing her face from the warmth of his chest.The embrace softened but didn’t quite dissipate.Ben loosened his shoulders and looked down at Rey with the slight semblance of a smile, but perhaps masking something more resembling fear.He wanted to say something, Rey could tell, and she wanted to hear it, but something compelled her to make him stop.

“How was your flight?” spilled out of her mouth and Ben tilted his head slightly.

“Uh, fine.”

“Good!” Rey said, perhaps a little too enthusiastically. _Why was she so god damn nervous._ “Did you rent a car? Or get a cab?”

“I just called a car… I’m only here for the night so-“

_“Oh.”_

A silence filled the room that was only heard by them.An air of disappointment or maybe something more like sadness flowed between them. 

“I have to go back to work,” he said. But Rey knew that wasn’t entirely truthful. 

“You came all this way just for a few hours?” 

“Not _just_ for a few hours,” Ben muttered under his breath.

  
  
—

  
  
Ben jumped and began to chase after Rey, who was making a sharp pace back to the house. She weaved between guests who were standing near the poolside when Taslin Brance, one of Poe’s football buddies, jumped in front of her path to stop her, and he made a signaling gesture near his hip, unseen to Rey andRey tried to sidestep  around him, unwilling to play this game when Grummgar, Bazine's newest ex, snuck up behind her.Ben was finally able to shove his way to Rey just as Grummgar had grabbed the strap of her halter and tried to yank it loose and with every force of strength Ben could muster he rammed himself against Grummgar’s body and sent him flying into the pool. 

“Dude, what the hell, I had my phone!” He exclaimed as Rey reached back to tighten her straps, realizing what was almost done.  
  
“What the fuck is wrong with you!” Ben yelled and the party went quiet.  
  
“Man, calm down, it’s not like she’s got much to reveal anyway, it was just a joke.”

With a muffled yelp, Rey sprinted off, hiding a sob into the crook of her arm as she tried to cover her face going went into the house.Ben rushed after, pushing past anyone in his way. 

She was out of view when Ben came inside, but he could hear a door slam from the upper floor.Jogging up the stairs he made his way to the bathroom, the only door that had been shut and he jiggled the knob to no avail. _Of course, she would lock it._ He lifted his hand and began to knock.

“Hey, it’s me,” Ben said lightly, trying to listen through the wood.No response besides as small hiccup.“Rey, can I come in?”

Nothing. 

He turned his back to the door and slid down the frame, folding over his knees as he waited. A few minutes went by, and Ben listened to Rey pacing on the other side, mumbling to herself from time to time. He had nearly dozed off when the door creaked open and Ben fell back onto the bathroom tile.Rey, her eyes still lightly wet and red, looked down at him as he blinked up at her. 

“Can… can we talk?” Rey said, in something barely above a whisper.

“Oh, yeah, of course,” Ben said as he scrambled to his feet from the floor, he began to turn to find a better place to talk but Rey pulled him into the bathroom by the back of his collar and locked the door behind them. Her glare became focused and intense and Ben’s heart fell down to his stomach.Rey’s mouth twisted as she tried to find the right words, and pinched the bridge of her nose when they wouldn’t come.

“Rey, I’m sorry,” Ben said, assuming at the end of whatever Rey wanted to say to him would end with his apology.

“What?” She said softly, her brow raising. 

“For them… and for me… I'm sure I fucked up somehow. ”

“Do you think I’m pretty?” she blurted out and Ben was left in shock with his mouth hanging open.  He waited for a moment of explanation but she just stared at him expectantly.   
  
“Is this a trick question?”

“No, just… do you think I’m pretty?”  Her face was blank.  Emotionless.  As if she had asked him a math problem.  
  
“You’re beautiful and… perfect and,” he stopped as Rey’s chin began to quiver again, “what is this about? What Bazine said? You can’t listen to her.”  
  
“I know, but then…” she trailed off as if she was recalling memories further back from just today. “I thought… maybe that’s why.”

“That’s why what?”

She went quiet again as she tried to regain herself.  Her eyes darted back and forth from him to the floor until eventually her she burst. 

“Why you don’t _touch_ me.”Rey spat, squeezing her eyes shut as her cheeks grew pink,“I thought I was being obvious, hell, I came over last week in a white shirt without a bra and you didn’t even notice.”

Ben did notice.There was no way he couldn’t notice.That day had been the greatest exercise of his self-control and it turned out it was for his benefit?  His expression was still contorted in shock from the moment she asked him if he thought she was pretty and now he could feel the blood drain from his face entirely. 

“I didn’t know you wanted me too”Ben gulped, his throat feeling tight, “I didn’t want to do anything to upset you.”  
  
“...I know,” her voice became soft again as if even she didn’t know how she felt about the whole situation, “and I’m thankful for that, I’m not ready for everything, not yet, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t start somewhere...”  
  
"Are you sure?" Ben managed to say, his voice so strained that it came out as barely a whisper.  Rey only looked at him with round eyes and a nod before stepping forward, pressing her body against his, pushing him softly against the doorframe, and suddenly all the blood that had drained from Ben's face had a new destination.

Her fingers wrapped around his neck as she pulled his lips down her hers, almost painfully so.  She was upset right now and he should walk away. He tried to tell himself that but she pulled him even closer, the smooth skin of her torso under his fingertips, and he let her take control.  Her skin was so warm, that it almost seemed to scald when he grasped her waist tighter.  A small sigh escaped her mouth as she gently began to work her tongue against his lips and he was beginning to worry his hold on her would bruise.  With a light 'pop' she backed away for the moment, giving them both a second to breathe, and she took that chance to gather her confidence as she reached behind her to pull at the bow of her top.  
  
"Rey, we don't have to do this now," Ben said, giving her one more chance to rethink her advances.  Also, the bathroom of his parents' house while a high school house party was happening wasn't to most romantic of scenarios.  But she shook her head and loosened the strap, letting the top fall to the group. 

How everything on her exuded softness Ben couldn't explain.  He had seen breasts before, he was a teenage boy with a laptop, but never had they been in front of him in real life and for specifically his viewing.  He must have looked like a damn fool staring right into her chest, staring at the petite plush curve of her frame as she stepped back towards him.   

“It’s okay.”

She kissed him again, softer this time, as his fingers grazed her waist once more.  The feel of her bare chest against his clothed one was both the most majestic yet infuriating experience at the same time.  He was drastically overdressed and wanted to feel only her skin against his, he wanted to rip every layer between them so they could be as close as humanly possible.  

Rey put her hand over his and gently began to guide them up to her breast, never breaking the kiss.  Ben's head pounded, but yet not a single thought could be formed as the heated skin of his chest came under his touch.  Smiling against his lips, Rey let out an encouraging moan as Ben ran his thumb across her exposed nipple, and squeezed experimentally ever so slightly. 

“Hey, Kid?”A disappointed baritone voice sprinkled with anger hissed through the door.

_Han Solo._

Rey jumped back from him, covering her chest with her arms as she scrambled to the floor get her top. Han wasn’t supposed to be home for another few days and Ben quickly made sure the door was locked.Luckily the sound of his father’s voice two feet was the perfect mood killer, but Rey still had to look a little less disheveled. 

“Can someone explain to me exactly why my house is filled with a bunch of kids I did not father?”

A crashing wave of defeat yet a surge of relief rushed over Ben.Though undoubtedly he’d suffer some sort of punishment, at least this damned or blessed party was over.  
  
  
—

  
  
She couldn’t stop looking at his mouth. His pouty pink lips that almost always seemed pursed.After catching herself again she forced herself to look away, but her eyes would drift back, wondering if they felt the same as they had all those years ago if she could allow herself a moment of weakness to find out. Ben certainly knew she was starring, she could feel his eyes on her, burning into her eyelids as the gazed downwards, but she couldn’t move.Nor did she want too. 

His hands were warm on her waist and hers were tied around his neck, the soft wisps of his hair tickling against her fingertips. 

She wanted to press her cheek against his chest again, but at the same time, didn’t want to stop looking. So she did what any normal person would do, she shoved him away. 

“Rey?!” Ben exclaimed as he stumbled back, surprised by the sudden change.

Rey looked down at her own hands, surprised they had acted in such a way and took a step back of her own. “I… I have to go.”She said, looking around her for the easiest pathway through the guests to freedom.“Bathroom. Or home. Or something.”

She pushed her way through the crowd, acting her best to seem calm, but something in her was quivering, and once there was a break, she ran, past the auditorium doors to the rest of the school that had been closed off.In her ears, her heart pounded, and the hot burn of tears ran down her face.

  
  
__

  
  
He loved getting to be the one who held her when they watched movies on the couch or even dozing off on a lazy Saturday.He loved being the one who got to kiss her goodnight after dinner dates (even if his uncle was staring him down from some unseen location.)He loved her. Every part of her.It should scare him because next year he’ll leave for college, but he has no doubt that they’ll figure it out. 

_Right?_

Something in Ben stirred and his grasp around Rey’s waist tightened as she laid with her back pressed against his chest as they binge-watched some old sitcom on his laptop in his room.

“Oof, too tight!” Rey said with a giggle, squirming slightly to get him to loosen up.

“Sorry,” he replied, ducking down to kiss the curve of her neck and to smell her shampoo where her hair had pooled around her shoulders.She sighed and leaned into back into him, putting her hands over his and every filter Ben’s brain had suddenly dissipated. “You know I love you, right?”

_He shouldn’t have said that._  
  
He froze with his nose pressed against her, praying that she somehow didn’t hear him despite being inches from her ear.

“I… I do.” Rey stuttered, her face beginning to flush. “It’s nice to hear you say it though,” she said, her voice becoming a bit quieter. 

“I love you, Rey, every part of you.” 

“I love you too.” 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry for the wait guys! Even though this chapter was so short, it was so hard to write.  
> As always, be mindful of the tags, some of you have gotten some of the foreshadowings, but just be aware. 
> 
> Ben is a reliable narrator when it comes to his own perception of things, but that doesn't make them 100% accurate reads.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry for the delay! And that this chapter is so short, I was getting such kind comments that I wanted to get this one out for you guys! And at least it's something :D Chapters may be shorter, but they will come out quicker because this one is supposed to be fairly short! Again, thank you so much for all the lovely comments, and hopefully, this will cheer you up some :D

 

Ben showed up on Rey’s doorstep the morning of their anniversary. A brisk Saturday fall morning, with a plan she might very well hate.Ben couldn’t make plans. He was awful with them.He was much better at just seeing where things went, but you couldn’t just see where things went on your first  _first_ anniversary. 

Chewie answered the door and stared at him silently. He just glared with arms crossed as if he was trying to read Ben’s mind to see his true intentions.    
  
"Hey, Uncle Chewie," Ben shrugged, breaking eye contact to look up at the sky awkwardly.  The man didn't reply and only continued to stare as if they were strangers, as if he wasn't the first person outside of Ben's blood family to hold him as a baby. 

Thankfully, it didn’t take long for Rey to scramble to the door, apologizing for the delay.She stood up on her tip-toes, gave Chewie a kiss on his bearded cheek and she grabbed Ben's hand and bolted for the car.The second in which the door was closed Rey jumped at him, pulling him into a much more vicious kiss.

Ben parted from her and looked back at the house, “we should probably wait until we aren’t in Chewie’s line of fire anymore.”

“It’s our anniversary!” she said cheerfully, “I don’t care, he’ll get over it.”

“I’m still afraid he’ll rip my arms off the second he sees me touch you.”Ben laughed turning on the ignition.“I used to be his favorite nephew too.”

“I’m sorry, I’ll just go back to London, I guess,” she said, lacing her words with sarcasm while still smiling in his direction. 

“Don’t even joke about that.”Ben pulled out of the driveway and headed down the suburb road, then rested one hand on her leg. 

“So what are we doing today?” Rey laced her fingers within Ben’s and began to stroke his palm. 

“Look inside the glove box.” Ben nodded towards the passenger side door.Rey let go of his hand and opened the compartment.She pulled out two slips of paper and observed them curiously. 

“Train tickets to the city?” she said in a near whisper, “there is no way Chewie will let me go all the way to Chicago for a day trip!  I've never been, he'll be furious!”

“He doesn’t need to know,” Ben smirked and even Rey let herself have a mischievous grin.“We’ll take the train so my dad doesn’t see the miles on the car, and be back just after sundown. It's an easy trip.  Hux, Phasma, and I used to do it all the time when we were sophomores.”

Rey looked back down at her ticket and twirled it in her fingers. She let out a slight hum of satisfaction, before letting out a dramatic gasp that nearly spooked Ben.

“But, Ben!Is it true that in Chicago that they don’t let you put ketchup on hot dogs?” Rey turned to him so quickly that he swore he felt the whiplash. 

“They’ll run you out of town for the very thought,” Ben laughed.

“We’re rebels today, Ben.And I’m putting ketchup on everything I can eat!”  
  
  
  
\--  
  


For the first time in her life Rey wished she could feel truly alone again for one moment in this tiny bathroom stall, but the music and the chatter was loud enough to echo throughout the entire school.She just wanted to gather her thoughts and her emotions into one tight little ball so she could throw it away.   
  
She felt like a teenage girl again, trapped in a bright colored tacky dress at her first homecoming, sobbing in the bathroom because she was the odd man out at a new school.She didn’t quite fit in with everyone even though her friends always insisted she did.She felt different.Something about her had always been different. Her mind worked in different ways, her eyes saw different things, and while her friends had never thought any different of her, she had always believed there was something more. 

Her second homecoming had been better, Rey thought as she brought her knees up to her chest sitting on top of a closed toilet lid.  The memory even made her grin briefly.  Ben had actually agreed to go, reluctantly. It was the first time she’d seen him dressed so formally and she imagined him standing next to the man in the auditorium now.If he was still even there.  Ben was planning on leaving tonight anyway.  He probably realized he was right to leave all those years ago, and maybe Rey had been wrong.  He'd lucked out.   
  
_No._ Rey reminded herself.She couldn’t let herself go down the spiral again.She had not been wrong.She had made the right choice.

“Rey?” A voice came from outside the bathrooms.For a moment Rey wished for it to be Ben, that he had come after her, but the voice that called for her was not his.

“Finn?” Rey sniffed.

“… Is anyone else in there? Can I come in?”Finn replied cautiously. 

“Yeah, I’m alone.”Rey opened the stall door and watched as Finn stumbled into the ladies room with his hands over his eyes as if something would pop out at him.He felt his way along the wall clumsily until Rey scoffed. “I said I was alone.You aren’t going to be blinded by the sight of the ladies bathroom.”

“Just being safe,” Finn said, lowering his hands, then wrapping his friend in a warm embrace.“Okay, what the hell happened? I thought things were going well with you two!”

“You were watching?”

“We were all watching.It’s the most interesting thing that’s happening here tonight.  For once Poe can actually admit he's not the most interesting phenomenon at a party.” Finn smiled and it warranted a weak one from Rey in return.

“I thought so too, but then… I started thinking about everything.I started to spiral a bit and he just seems so… good! And I’m so happy that he is after everything, but…”Rey gestured wildly as she searched herself for words, begging them to come to her.“I don’t know!”

“You never got closu-“ Finn began, thinking those were the right words.

“I know I didn’t, but that’s not it.” Rey buried her face in her hands then looked at herself in the mirror.Her makeup was smudged and her cheeks were blotchy and there was no way she was going back out there looking like this. She looked back at her friend who starred at her with a furrowed yet sympathetic brow, trying to understand what even Rey couldn’t.

“Finn, there is something I never told you about the night Ben left.”

“What is it?”  
  
Rey had very few secrets in her life.Some she kept for others, but this one she kept for herself.  
  
“He asked me to marry him.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, I'm so sorry for the wait. Hopefully, this little bite will help some :D Your comments really helped push me through. We are getting into the heavy stuff soon, so it's a bit harder to write.


	8. Chapter 8

 

Like nearly everything else in Ben’s life, their anniversary had not gone according to plan.

Getting to Chicago had gone well enough.The train had actually been on time, and they arrived at Union Station without an issue, they’d even managed to take one of those obligatory mirror selfies at Cloud Gate before everything had gone awry.

It started off small, Rey had stepped in some gum, but maybe Ben should have seen that as an omen and they should have gone back to the train station right then and there.Rey dropped her phone and screen cracked, Ben lost his credit card at a restaurant so that severely limited their activities to the small amount of cash he had, then on their way to Navy Pier the weather went from mildly pleasant to absolute shit.  The pouring rain it made it impossible to get a taxi back to Union Station, and when they finally managed to get there, soaking wet and miserable, the last train back home had already departed. 

They were stuck. 

Rey and Ben walked out of the station, where the rain hadn’t let up at all, and Ben pulled out his phone in defeat and shame.

“Hey mom, it’s Ben.”

“Whats wrong?” Leia said expectantly. 

“Nothing is wrong!” Ben retorted instinctually before stepping further away from Rey and began again in a whisper, “Ugh, I fucked up, mom.”

“Where are you?”

“Chicago.”  
  
“Chicago!?” Leia yelped so loudly that Ben had to cover the phone speaker.

“Look, I didn’t think you’d notice, I took Rey here for the day, and I was an idiot who didn’t check the weather or how long it would take back to the station and we missed the last train back home.”

“Ben…” Leia sighed, “Where are you? I’ll find you a hotel.”

“What?!” 

“I’m not going to make Rey sleep on the street in the rain.” 

“Union Station.”

Ben looked back at Rey who was reaching out from under the overhang to feel some of the raindrops despite already being soaking wet.Leia expressed her goodbyes and hung up to try to call in a favor.Sometimes it served well to have a mother who made right by nearly everyone. 

“I guess we’re staying the night,” Ben turned to Rey, who was tapping her feet in a puddle that was beginning to form underneath her. 

“Chewie is going to be so mad.”

“You’ll be fine,” Ben sighed as the text came in from his mother giving him an address. There was a decent hotel three blocks south.“If anyone is going to have their arms ripped off it’s me.”

“That’s true,” and despite the entire day, she managed to smile. 

The two made a mad dash down the sidewalk, taking one or two breaks under shop awnings when they could before making it into the hotel.They were both soaked to the bone and freezing when they reached the concierge desk, in which the worker judgmentally gave them both a glance over.Ben gave them the confirmation number his mother had sent him and the concierge's attitude changed.  
  
“Oh! You must who Leia Organa had just called about, her son?”

“…yup,” Ben replied, without enthusiasm, and Rey bumped him in the side to encourage him to be more polite.    
  
"We hope you enjoy your stay."   And that was it. No more questions asked.  Sometimes Ben wondered if his mother had been some sort of spy because she always got things done without people raising an eyebrow. 

After being handed the room key and an awkward ride in an elevator, Ben opened the door and pinched between his eyes. 

“I’m so sorry, Rey, none of this day is going right.  I wanted you to actually enjoy today.”

Rey shucked off her soaking wet jacket and tossed it over the desk chair in the corner of the room before plopping down on the bed to take off her shoes. “What do you mean?” she chuckled as she rung out her socks.

“I ruined your first trip to Chicago and Chewie is going to kill me when I take you home tomorrow,”Ben sat on the bed next to her then fell onto his back with his arms spread.

“Ruined?” Rey, with her back still facing him, turned her head slightly towards him, “A rainy night in a nice hotel in a nice city with my nice boyfriend? Sounds pretty nice to me.” She smiled for a brief moment before her face turned red and she looked away. 

“I… I can sleep on the floor if this makes you uncomfortable at all,” Ben said, as he sat up again.The realization that the two would be alone in a hotel room for an entire night finally hitting him like an immediate sunburn. 

“No,” Rey shook her head, “we’ve taken naps together on your couch, why should this be any different?”

Rey stood up and stretched a bit before walking over to the hotel closet and opening the door, “Thank goodness!” Rey exclaimed and Ben leaned forward to try to see the source of her excitement.With a hop, Rey reappeared with two bathrobes in hand.“Hotel bathrobes!”She threw one at Ben and wrapped the other around herself.Maneuvering to slide off her dress underneath once she was covered. 

“Better than cold wet clothes,” Ben said, wrapping the robe around himself like a blanket. 

“I think I’m going to jump in the shower,” Rey said as she picked her wet dress off the floor, tossing it over the chair with her jacket, “warm up a bit, ya know.”Ben nodded as she looked back at him and for a moment he wondered if that was an invitation, but like the damn idiot he was he just nodded and watched as she left to the bathroom. 

Rey and he were in a hotel together. _Alone_.   She was undressing one door away.  This would be any guys freaking dream scenario.No one was around to interrupt, everyone they knew was hours away, they could spend the whole night just wrapped up in each other. 

As Ben heard the shower start he begun pacing the floor debating how exactly he wanted to go about this.Should they talk about this first? Should they just see where things went? Did she even want too?If the answer to that final question was no, he had nothing to worry about.It’s not like he had a condom with him or anything because he was not planning this situation at all.

He gazed over into the room’s vanity mirror and groaned in dissatisfaction.He looked like a sopping wet afghan hound.It still shocked him on a daily basis that someone like her, someone so universally perfect, didn’t shudder at the thought of him. Ben slipped out of the rest of his clothes, keeping his boxers on, and tied the robe around his waist.It barely went down to his knees, and it made him look even sillier, but it was more comfortable than his rain-drenched apparel. 

When Rey had emerged from the bathroom, in her robe and hair wrapped in a towel, Ben was sitting in bed scrolling through his phone.He’d texted Phasma the situation in an attempt to maybe get some advice, as she was more helpful than Hux even if it was only by 2%, but she had just replied with a bunch of emojis of winking faces and eggplants. 

Rey plopped down on the bed next to him and looked at him expectantly leaning over on her hands.She hummed to try to gather his attention and Ben turned to her.Her wide eyes shimmering. 

“How do you look so good right out of the shower?” Ben said, and Rey just laughed. “I look all sort of mess.”

“You look cute,” she said, reaching up to ruffle his hair like a child, which had begun to dry.She leaned in to kiss him and Ben pulled her to him.“This is kinda fun,” she said when she backed away slightly, “Having our own little room.It’s like playing house.” 

She threw back the covers and slipped underneath them, tossing the towel wrapped around her head onto the floor.She leaned back onto Ben and wrapped her arms around him, nuzzling her head under his chin.The two of them rested comfortably for a moment in silence before Rey spoke again.

“I asked Chewie if I could see a doctor about birth control.”

That was _not_ was Ben was expecting. 

“Oh.” He gulped as his body temperature rose.“So he’s _actually_ going to kill me.”

“No, I mean, it wasn’t the most comfortable topic for him, but he said the decision was mine.”Rey slipped just the ends of her fingers underneath the opening in Ben’s robe and rested them just above his fluttering heart.“I told him that it hadn’t happened yet, but that we were thinking about it.”

“You…were thinking about it?”

Rey lifted her head and rolled her eyes, “I know male biology makes it a little more obvious,” she pointed near his midsection and Ben never had such an urge to bury himself alive, “but girls think about it too.”

Rey placed her head back onto his chest and wrapped her arm around his torso. 

“Just… um… let me know? I guess?” _Smooth.    
_  
“I will,” she giggled, somehow finding him endearing.“I just want to wait until then, ya know?  Be as prepared as possible.”

“I do.”

Ben weaved his fingers into the wet strands of Rey’s hair and held her closely at his side, his breath slowing and eyes closing. 

“But that doesn’t mean we can’t have a little fun until then.”He opened one eye to see Rey grinning at him and sleep be damned as he rolled them over, pinning her to the bed with his lips. 

 

 

_It’s like playing house_

 

  

—  
  
  
“Finn, please say something.”

Finn had been standing silent, with his mouth open, for the better part of two minutes. Rey was pretty sure this was the longest Finn had ever gone without speaking.She waved her hand in front of his face and he blinked to attention.

“I can’t believe you never told me.”

“I never told anyone.” Rey slumped against the bathroom wall, letting her head fall against the tile. 

“Did he like…. _propose_ propose?” Finn asked, joining her before they both slid down to sit on the floor. _Now_ it felt like high school again.

“He had a ring and everything,” she collapsed into her arms trying not to picture the memory, “he was so sure I’d say yes, too.” 

“You didn’t, right?” Finn asked, and Rey scoffed.

“Do I look married to him, Finn?” She said with an exasperated chuckle, pointing at her ring finger.“Of course I said no, I wasn’t even 17.”

“Wow.”The two quieted for a moment, gazing ahead at nothing. 

“That was the last time I spoke to him.He just… left after that.We couldn’t even talk about it.And now he’s just… out there… and the only thing we can talk about is how his flight was.”

“I’m so sorry, Rey.”

“Don’t be,” Rey forced a smile, tears gathering in the corners of her eyes once more, “It feels really good to tell someone, actually.”

“You should have told me earlier.” 

“I know.Ben and I, we were just so messed up back then.He thought he was offering me everything I’ve ever wanted, and with everything he was dealing with he honestly thought he was doing the right thing.It broke my heart to say no, maybe as much as his, and every now and then I still wonder what life would be like if I’d said....”

Rey trailed off and Finn didn’t respond, and she was grateful, she didn’t need to hear the confirmation of how silly she was behaving. 

“And now he seems to be doing so well, and he looks so good! I mean, have you _looked_ at him?”

Finn laughed and stroked his chin, “he’s kinda hard to miss.”

“And I probably just lost my one opportunity to talk to him, like really talk to him.Tell him everything I’ve been thinking about the last ten years.Tell him how badly he hurt me, and… to tell him I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for what?”

Rey just shook her head, and Finn didn’t push.“He’s probably on his way back to the airport now, and I don’t even blame him, I’m a mess.”

“Hey, I’ll call Rose over and she can help you fix your makeup.Then I’ll find Ben, okay?”

“Finn, you don’t need to do that.”Finn rose from the floor and Rey grabbed his sleeve, she didn’t want to ruin anyone else's night just because she was having a breakdown.  
  
Finn just looked down and smiled.A smile that was a little sad behind the eyes.“I want too.” He paused. "Plus this is way more fun than manning the punch table"

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember when this was supposed to be just a short 10k thing and here we are about nearly double that.  
> Thank you guys so much for the support, I know this fic was on hiatus for too long, but I can get the shorter stints done faster. Again, I suspect we'll be at around 25k when this is finished. A Short fic, but I hope you like it.
> 
> (Thanks for those who commented telling me to get my butt into gear! (not really, but knowing people were waiting and excited for more is encouraging!)
> 
> You guys rock!


	9. Chapter 9

 Ben’s parents had talked about him behind closed doors like he was some sort of monster his whole life.

Yet, he hadn’t done anything _wrong._ Sure, he had made stupid decisions as every kid does, but that didn’t warrant the look they always gave him like he was destined for failure.He knew he wasn’t the easiest person to raise, but he thought a part of that must have been a reflection on them, but it was always the blame game with them.Blaming and pointing fingers at anyone else besides themselves. 

Ben did though know his parents loved him, in that obligatory parental way that meant they rarely made sacrifices to their own lives for him but still provided food and shelter.He made them uncomfortable, he knew it.He could sense it like a weird sixth sense.Han and Leia didn’t know how to say no to any aspect of their lives, from work to travel to their son, they never said no.So their version of raising a child became “give him whatever he wants since we’re leaving tomorrow on some diplomatic/social/military/senatorial issue that I feel obligated to take part of even though no one asked.” 

But, Ben didn’t hate them.He just didn’t need them.They walked on so many eggshells around him that he only saw them as shells of people.Almost like when they went away they completely disappeared from existence until they reentered the door.

“I’m thinking about calling Maz, to see if she’ll start talking to Ben again,” Leia said in a hushed tone behind her and Han’s closed bedroom door.Ben had been coming home a bit late after dropping Rey back at her house and stopped when he heard mention of his voice.“I afraid he’s regressing…”

“He’s fine, Leia,” Han, clearly having no interest in this discussion, responded.

“I don’t think he is, I think-“ She sounded worried. Panicked even.   
  
“Shouldn’t the boy make that decision for himself? If he says he’s fine, he’s fine.”

“He thinks being an adult or a man means he can’t ask for help, we need to push him to go get it.”

“He’s applying to colleges, getting good grades, and hell, somehow found a girlfriend that’s 100 times out of his league that may even be just as smitten with him as he is with her, he’s fine.”

“He nearly had a panic attack when I touched his shoulder the other day, Han.”

“You probably just startled him,” he said with a groan, “you worry too much.”

“It wasn’t like that, Han.”The room got quiet.

Ben knew he should walk away. He looked down at his hand as it trembled in front of him and his chest became tight as he tried to remember how to breathe.His lungs constricted like he only knew how to inhale.He grabbed his own hand, trying to stop it from shaking and his whole body began to shiver.

“Look, if there is a chance he can forget about everything with _bastard son of a bitch_ I think we should give him that chance, I’m sure he’d rather forget it. Just let him be a normal kid.”

“He’s never going to be able to forget it, Han.  Neither of us will.Not talking about it won’t make it all go away.” Leia growled, and Ben swore she even sounded like she was crying, and her footsteps became louder and she headed towards the door. Ben scrambled down the hall as quietly as he could but he knew his mother still saw him before he ran into his room.

  

—

 

“Rey?” It had been about five minutes since Finn had left to get Rose and perhaps find Ben when Rose arrived in the restroom doorway with makeup wipes in hand.“Finn told me you needed help?”

“…needed help _again_.” Rey finished forcing an exhausted laugh, taking the cloth from Rose’s hand and wiping it under her eyes to rid the dripping mascara.“Thank you.”

“Anytime,” Rose smiled, with a semi-rough slap on the back.“Now let’s get you back out there!”She turned around triumphantly, with a huge grin to try to raise Rey’s spirits and Rey grabbed her shoulder.

“Rose, can I thank you?” She murmured, and Rose turned back toward her with a confused brow.

“I thought you already did?”  
  
“No, for everything, for the last 12 years I’ve known you.You didn’t have to do any of this for me, none of you have too, we all could have moved on and become new people and-”

Rose just continued to smile and tilted her head just slightly. “The little family we’ve made over the years, it was worth it.People may have come and gone, but you know me, I don’t think anyone is ever truly gone.” She put a finger to the crescent necklace she wore and the two women exchanged an understanding smile. 

“I don’t know what I’d do without you.” Rey consoled.

“You’d look like a melting raccoon.” Her friend winked and brought her into a quick embrace.“If this is too much for you, you don’t have to do it, but I think you’ll regret not taking this chance.”

“I know.”

“Good, then let’s go!” 

They let go of each other's arms and when they left the restroom, sure enough, Ben Solo was slumped against the brick wall outside of the door.Rey half expected Finn to be holding him there but was surprised to see Finn was nowhere in view. 

“I’ll leave ya to it then,” Rose gave Rey’s shoulder a quick final squeeze before beginning to walk away. Ben turned his head to watch as Rose went back into the reunion and as soon as she was out of sight, he opened his mouth. 

“So, I guess we should talk.”  
  
"I guess," Rey responded, crossing her arms around herself as to create a barrier between them.    
  
"I wasn't sure if you wanted too." Ben wobbled a bit as he stood from the floor, slouched forward a bit in what looked to be embarrassment. "Talk about it, I mean."  
  
"I wasn't sure I wanted too either," Rey paused, "but I think we need too."  
  
"Okay."

Then he extended his hand again as he had on the dance floor, but this wasn't an invitation to dance.  She accepted his fingers in her own, unsure of what his plan was, and the two began to walk further away from the reunion and deeper into their old school. 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for another short one! But I find it a bit easier to post more quickly with these short updates, so I hope you don't mind! Also: WOW. And WOW. 300 kudos! I'm so glad y'all are enjoying this story. The next chapters are also going to be longer too since we're getting into the deep stuff, so sorry for the last of the lighter chapters. 
> 
> Also again, please be mindful of the tags if you have certain topics you can't face in writing, nothing in this fic will be too graphic or graphically explained, and some of you have properly assumed some things, but I don't want anyone to go into anything they aren't prepared for. This is a fic about healing and recovery, but happy endings :D.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Insert picture of me laughing at myself for thinking this would be done in 10k, then 25k, final estimate will be 30k*
> 
> Again, please be wary of tags. Past abuse will not be graphically detailed, but it will be mentioned. A few of you have properly assumed somethings in the comments, but I want to make sure no one comes across anything they were not warned about.

Rey’s arms were slung over Ben’s shoulders from behind as he hunched over his kitchen table scribbling furiously in his Chemistry notebook.She went from watching him intently to doing everything in her power to win his attention but either option was horribly distracting.

“Come on, Ben, just take a break,” she whined, pressing her lips to the shell of his ear which caused a surge of heat to run through his body. 

“Don’t you have homework to do too?” he said, leaning back in his chair slightly so she could get a slightly better angle because, _fuck_ , that felt nice. 

“I’m done,” she said in a soft voice, her lips still dangerously close to his ear. 

“This is due tomorrow, Rey, I’ll be done in a bit,” but his body leaned back into her affections, contradicting his words. 

“Come on, Ben, you're a senior, it’s not like your grades matter much anymore.”She nipped at his neck and he bolted up in his chair as she giggled. 

It was true that at this point in the year, most seniors gave up on their studies because, well, colleges would never receive that information unless you incredibly messed up.But Ben had only ever prided himself in one area in his life, and that was that he was intelligent.  _(_ _Well, that and the fact that he somehow landed an equally brilliant out of his league girlfriend.)_

“I haven’t gotten any acceptances yet, so I gotta keep it up a few more weeks.”

Rey sighed and slid into the chair next to him as he restarted copying equations into his notebook. 

“How was the Northwestern Application?” Rey asked and Ben’s pencil flew out of his hand. 

“What?” He said, picking up the pencil from the ground as if nothing happened.

“How’d the Northwestern application go?” She repeated and Ben’s mouth went dry, “I gotta be prepared for when I apply, ya know?”

“Eh, pretty standard, write about your life, ya know. The essay will be different by the time you apply anyway,”he lied. 

“You're a legacy, so you’ll get in no problem, so the essay probably doesn't matter much for you,” Rey said, half teasing, half annoyed, and Ben’s gut twisted to the point of nausea.

“I… I may go somewhere else, ya know?” he murmured and Rey looked at him with raised eyebrows,“Somewhere I earned my spot, not got an easy pass cause my mother donates.” 

“Northwestern is a really good school though,”Rey said,“and close.”

“Too close.” He muttered but Rey seemed lost in thought.

“Well, you’ll see when you get your acceptances. All your other choices are really competitive, but you have an easy in at Northwestern.”  
  
Ben nodded.

Sure, he would have gotten into that school easily.

Except he didn’t apply. 

  
—

 

“Do you think we’ll get in trouble, we're technically not supposed to be in this area of the school,” Rey asked as they walked, still hand in hand, down the brown brick hallways. 

“I know the woman who runs the place,” Ben gave her hand a gentle squeeze and offered her a wink and, _god damn it,_ Rey could feel her cheeks redden and she laughed nervously. 

“Your mother can still get mad.”

“ _You’re telling me,”_ he snorted. 

“She’s a saint though,” Rey said and for a moment Ben’s step hesitated.

“I know.”He pulled her down another Hallway, and it became clear to Rey that Ben was trying to find something, they weren’t just mindlessly wandering. 

If it hadn’t been for Leia all those years ago, Rey wasn’t sure how she would have gotten past Ben leaving the way he did.His mother had been her shoulder to cry on, as she tried not to cry herself.She had let Rey stay at their home for the entire month after Ben had left because Rey was so convinced he would come home and they would fix everything, and she wanted to be there the second he did. 

Han had been… Han about the whole thing.He was grieving, but in a way that he never let anyone see.While Leia had made the decision to stay home more often, and halt her political career, Han and disappeared into his. 

Rey and Leia needed each other, and before Rey was about to move back with Chewie before the new school year started, Leia told her everything. Everything Ben had locked away.  
  
_“Han thought it was better to let him try to forget it, it ate me alive every day because I saw that he was still suffering through his exterior.  The way he jumped at affection.We drove him away.Han and I thought we were helping him cope, but we weren’t there like we should have been.Maybe we had been selfish, it hurt so much to see him suffer, maybe that’s why we buried ourselves in our work._ _This is all my fault.”_

Leia and Rey held each other into the evening, and Rey decided to stay a few more days.She cried for him at night and would sneak into his bedroom to sleep because it still smelled like him for as long as she stayed at the Solo house. 

“Rey?” Ben squeezed her hand again and Rey snapped back to attention, her eyes glazed over.“Are you alright?”

“Y-“ she choked, “No.”

That’s when Rey realized where Ben was taking her.The same place she had wandered off to earlier.It was his old locker.He leaned back against the metal, sliding down to the floor, still not letting go of her hand, so she reluctantly went down to the floor with him. 

“It’s hard to sit in a dress.” she sniffed, and Ben let out a laugh and Rey looked over curiously.

“You were wearing a dress when we first met.Right here, actually.”He had leaned his head back and closed his eyes as if he could see it again. 

“You remember that?”

“Yeah, I remember because you looked so uncomfortable.Like you thought the skirt would blow up at any moment.”He opened his eyes and rolled his head towards her, “I think I fell in love with you right then and there.”

She looked at him as silence washed over them both, their foreheads inches away from touching.“Maybe we shouldn’t say stuff like that… right now,”she managed, the weight of the memory too heavy for her current state. 

“Oh,” his expression fell slightly, and his grasp and her hand loosened, “I’m sorry.”

Rey tightened her hold before he could pull his hand away completely and the quiet returned. Just the sound of breath.  And silence turned Rey into a hypocrite. 

“I knew I loved you when you kissed me.I felt so stupid.” She laughed to herself as Ben chewed on his lip, “Loving you so quickly.I was 15.There was no way you could love someone so quickly, I barely knew you, but… I knew that.” 

He didn’t respond. 

“So even if I wasn’t in love with you then, I knew I would be, no matter what.”

Ben leaned his forehead into hers and they met with a small _’thump_ ’.“I thought you said we shouldn’t stay stuff like that right now.” 

“I know,” she closed her eyes and breathed him in, “but I needed you to know that, I don’t think I was very good at expressing it.So when you proposed-”

“It’s my turn to say let’s not talk about that,” Ben said, moving back what seemed like ten feet, and Rey frowned at the loss of proximity. 

“I need to, Ben. I never told anyone what happened. It wasn’t ridiculous to me that you asked, it was just a lot and we were so young.”

_ No response. _

“I didn’t know what you were going through and I just wished you had trusted me enough to let me in, to tell me what was going on, to let me help you.”

_ No response. _

“We were too young and naive to feel the way we did about each other.We met at the wrong time in our lives.I think we knew too soon we were kindred spirits and stopped thinking about who we were outside of each other. But I still wonder, to this day, what would have happened if I said yes.”

“We would have hated each other,” and his response shocked her. 

“What?”

“Don’t for a second think you made a mistake, you were the only sane one in our relationship at that point, I was manic and afraid, and you were the best thing I had going for me, and I couldn’t bear to let you go but I couldn’t stay.So much so, that I drove us apart.We would have hated each other if you had said yes.It would have fucked up your whole life Rey.”

  


—

  
  
Rey hadn’t been subtle with all her longing glances at the prom posters and decorations that littered the hall a couple months out from Ben's graduation.She would always mutter the date under her breath whenever they passed under a banner like time was running out. She should have known that school dances weren’t Ben’s forte and he’d only done Homecoming because her freshman year homecoming had been so awful he wanted to make it up to her. He had said nothing about prom.It wasn’t even her prom.Prom was only for Juniors and Seniors, so it shouldn’t have been that important to her. 

Until one day, two weeks before the event, she snapped and slammed his locker shut in his face as he was grabbing books to take home after school with a fury he hadn’t seen in a while.For a moment he feared he had actually done something wrong.

“Are you going to ask me to the prom or what?” She snarled, her arms crossed out in front of her, an awkward air passed between the two of them as Ben settled from the surprise.

“Ask you?” 

“I’ve been dropping hints for weeks that I want to go, and the last day to buy tickets is Friday.”She stood her ground and jabbed her finger into his chest.He actually found it strangely attractive. 

“I hadn’t noticed.” he lied, and that seemed to anger her more. 

“Ben, I know you like having this ‘too cool’ aura about yourself that doesn’t like school events, and you think pep should be illegal in all 50 states, but come on.This is the last thing we get to do while we are both in school together.”

“Rey, it’s not even your prom.”Her face reddened further. 

“No, but all my friends will be there!Finn is a junior and taking Rose.Kaydel asked Poe to come back from school to go with her. And…you-“

“What about me?”

“Your friends will be there, Hux is student body president and Phasma loves these things!” 

“I think you overestimate how much I like my friends.”

Rey puffed out her cheeks and let out a frustrated growl. 

“I just want to do something special before you go off to school next year, I know you won’t be too far away, but still, it won’t be the same.”

Rey continued to rant as Ben began digging through his backpack, haphazardly listening to her bullet points of why he was acting selfishly. He pulled an envelope from his bag and flipped it at Rey who fumbled to catch it mid-sentence. 

“What is this?”

“Open it.”

Her face, still pink with irritation, softened as she opened the paper flap. 

“I was going to ask you at dinner tonight, try to make something special of it…”

Rey’s open palm with the envelope smacked Ben on the chest as she looked at him wide-eyed with her lips sealed shut.He grabbed the envelope back from her, confused, and perhaps rejected and cocked his head to the side. 

"O-Okay,"  she whispered, bashfully talking out of the corner of her mouth, “I’ll pretend I didn’t see them. I want you to ask me at dinner.” 

He put the tickets hastily back in the pack, offered his hand to his girlfriend, and she took it as they made their way outside, Rey hiding a tiny satisfied smile to herself. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry again for the wait, this fic really is so easy for me to write! But time goes by way too quickly. Almost done though :D 
> 
> And to make things clear, nothing that happened to Ben was Leia's fault, but it's a parents guilt.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again: be wary of tags. Nothing in this fic will be overly graphic, but a lot is implied.

“How about this one?” Rey popped out of the dressing stall in a knee-length green dress and displayed it with a twirl.Ben, like most disgruntled boyfriends who were forced to go shopping, sat across from her on a lounge chair the store had set up for their patrons. 

“You look gorgeous.And it’s your favorite color.”Ben said honestly, but he’d thought she had looked perfectly lovely in the other seven she’d tried on too. 

Rey stared at him for a moment, seeming to process his reaction, and with a humph returned to the dressing stall, yet again seeming displeased with his reaction. 

“Rey, I said I liked it!” Ben shouted so she could hear him through the closed door. 

“Exactly!” She responded, and when she came back out she was back in her street clothes.“I want you to more than just ‘like it’”

“I’ll love anything you wear as long as you are in it, I promise,” he said, “and I’ll wear a matching tie and get you a flower thing.”

“Ben, this is our _Prom_!” she said, throwing down her arms for emphasis, “we’ll remember this day for the rest of our lives! I want everything about it to be special.”

Rey’s eyes darted around the room for a moment, confirming that they were indeed alone.She opened her mouth to say something more but snapped it shut as she began to nervously shuffle through the tried-on dresses in her hands. 

“I’m sure it will be,” Ben said, looking around the room as well, trying to find the source of why Rey suddenly was acting so antsy.He shrugged and starting to rise from his chair when Rey leaned forward. 

“Well, I was thinking, if we’re both wanted too, we could maybe…after prom,” she trailed off and twisted her lips, a warm flush highlighting her cheeks. _“You know.”_

Ben was shell-shocked for at least five seconds before also becoming overwhelmed with paranoia that they were being watched, he didn’t intend for any part of this particular conversation to be anywhere public and he quickly got to his feet. “Oh!”

“We don’t have too,” she immediately covered. His reaction, for not the first time that day, not lining up with her expectations. 

“No! That’s not what I mean, I just…” Ben looked down at Rey who was trying her best not to look totally mortified and a soft smile crossed his face, “Prom, huh? Seems a little cliche.”

She seemed to calm at the joke and lightly punched him in the arm, “I know it’s cliche, but, the fancy clothes, the music, the dancing, it’s a cliche for a reason.  It's romantic.I’ve been taking the pill for almost two months now and… I don’t know, it just feels right.Right?”

Another shop customer walked back into the dressing corridors and slipped into one of the empty stalls.Rey pursed her mouth as her blush intensified up her neck and Ben spun her around to potentially continue this conversation elsewhere, Rey’s arms still full of the failed dresses. She hung them up on the return rack before leaving the store back into the local mall where neither of them seemed to be able to speak about it again. _  
_

 

_—-_

 

  
“Why did you do it then?”Rey said, in a tone just about a whisper, “Why did you ask me to marry you if you just thought we’d hate each other?” 

“Well, I didn’t think we’d hate each other at the time.”Ben had become more serious,finally letting his casual facade fade.Rey wasn’t sure if she regretted opening this door or not.“At the time it was the only thing that made sense.”

“I shouldn’t have brought it up.”  
  
“No, you should have.You deserve to talk about this.I had a breakdown and you were the one who suffered because of it.”

Another wave of silence and both of them leaned back against the metal lockers, still sitting on the floor, staring out at nothing. 

“It wasn’t just me, I know you were hurting too,”Rey said, fidgeting with her fingers in her lap, “I didn’t know everything.”

“That’s because I didn’t want you to know, Rey.”Ben’s head fell forward then he turned towards her again.“I had gone to doctors, therapists, any sort of medical professional who could help me for years, and after all that I thought the best solution was just to surround myself with people who had no idea what had happened.”

Rey understood.She truly did.Perhaps more than anyone did she understand the need to begin a new life, but the difference was she could always open up to Ben in a way she couldn’t with anything else, and it still hurt that she couldn’t be that same person for him. 

“I hated my parents, I hated seeing them.I hated that sad look they’d give me whenever they realized that maybe if they had paid more attention they would have known better than to leave me with that creep they barely knew.But _hell_ , I’m just like them, my family copes by pretending nothing ever happened.” 

With much restraint, Rey kept her mouth closed and her expression soft.Even though Leia had told her mostly everything, hearing it from Ben’s mouth was something else, and her heart ached liked she was hearing it for the first time.

“I went back to therapy a couple years after I left,” he said, a hint of a consoling smirk coming through at recognizing Rey’s disbelief is his candidness, “it started helping once I decided to let it help.I was more stubborn in my youth, constantly wanting to prove the point that I was beyond repair and I could do that on my own.I guess, truly being alone was the kick I needed to know I didn’t want to do it alone.”

“That’s… good” was all Rey could manage. 

“It was so hard for me to accept that you may actually love me the same way I loved you.I was just waiting for something to happen to prove that right.I’m not sure you had any idea how much I was holding back before then because I didn’t want to scare you off but look how that worked out…I burst.”  
  
——

 

“Seriously, Ms. Organa, you don’t have to do this,” Rey protested as Leia shuffled through her jewelry boxes up by her bedroom vanity, Ben sulking in the corner with nothing to do. 

“I know I don’t _have_ too, but I want too!”She pulled a pair of glistening diamond earrings and held them up to Rey’s complexion before deciding if they were suitable or not.“Since Han and I will be out of town this weekend, I want to be a part of this!”

Rey and Ben exchanged a quick look before glancing away, Rey refocusing intently on the earrings and Ben turning to face the wall.

They hadn’t really talked much more about _after_ prom plans after that last day of dress shopping, but it clearly was lingering in the back of both their minds constantly. Ben knew that if they were truly ready to do this, they should be able to talk about it without crippling embarrassment, but more than anything Ben was just worried he’d say something so stupid she’d change her mind about the whole thing.  _And he didn't want that._

“Oh, that’s pretty!”Rey said as Leia sifted through another jewelry box and Ben looked over curiously.She pulled out the item in question and it was a silver ring, with a sapphire stone at its center. 

“This was my mother’s engagement ring,” Leia smiled, a bit sadly, but a smile nonetheless, “my biological mother’s that is.”

“You were adopted?” Rey asked, a spark of something in her eye.Ben thought it to be something of kinship given her own family situation. 

“I was,”Leia held up the ring and twisted it in the air so it caught the light, and Ben winced at the glare as it crossed his eye, “I also have a twin brother, he and I were separated after we were born, our mother passed during childbirth.”

“I’m sorry,” Rey whispered, that spark of camaraderie in her eye changing to one of guilt. 

“There is no reason to be sorry, dear,” she responded, sensing Rey’s change of demeanor, “I was raised by the two most wonderful people on this planet who knew my biological mother very well.So in a way, I feel like I knew her, well, at least her taste in jewelry.”

“Well, she had good tastes.” Rey grinned.

Leia turned towards Ben, showcasing the jewel one more time, “Ben, remember that Rey likes blue.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for another short one, but the next two chapters are big ones, so I wanted to get the one last exposition out of the way before we handle the big events like Prom and the Proposal. 
> 
> Thank you guys so much for the support! Your comments really helped push me along even though I know it takes me a bit to write these. But every comment is the push I need and hopefully, this fic will be finished by the end of the month! (I'm dreaming big.)


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it's been a while, so I may recommend checking out the last chapter again, cause the current day stuff picks up pretty much right away.

  
Ben Solo had decided he hated suits.

He liked blankets and hoodies and comfortable things.  
  
He did not like suits.

Ben adjusted the tie around his neck, loosening it slightly as he waited to get out of his car to pick up Rey from her house.Her friends had gotten a limo, which Rey had probably turned down for Ben’s sake, but he was grateful for it nonetheless.He still had such a hard time grasping what was such a big deal about this whole event. It was just the people they saw every day in fancier clothes grinding against each other.He had a hard time picturing Rey’s version of the evening that she had thought of as romantic. 

He slipped out of his car and knocked nervously on her front door, praying that Chewie wouldn’t answer. 

Which he did. 

Judgmental and grumpy as ever. 

Ben really missed the days where he was Chewie’s favorite nephew. 

“Ben is that you?” Rey shouted from atop the stairs.She peeked just her head around the corner in which Ben could see a loose curl bounce from atop a pulled back hairstyle.“Be right down.”

After a brief moment, Rey appeared on the top step.And time seemed to freeze as if Ben was trapped in an awful teen rom-com.She was wearing a dark red dress with a lace bodice and off the shoulder straps.The lace blended itself into a slimming red silk skirt and Ben’s heart stopped in his chest.He almost pinched himself to remind himself that this was real. That Rey was his.She chose him.For some reason unbeknownst to him, she chose him. 

_ “Holy shit.” _

Rey smiled so brightly that Ben was sure he had been blinded until he snapped back to attention when Chewie punched him in the arm. She jumped down the final few steps and let up on her toes to kiss him on the cheek.Averting his eyes, Chewie grumbled in his never-ending disapproval. 

“Everyone is spending the night at Rose’s tonight,” Rey turned to her caregiver after releasing her embrace, “Prom after-party kinda thing, so I’ll be back in the morning.”

Chewie mumbled his 'okay' and Rey began to lead the two of them out the door.This after-party was a surprise to Ben. He opened his mouth to inquire about it and Rey nearly pushed him out the door. 

“Bye, Chewie!” Rey said over anything Ben was about to say as she closed the door behind them, dragging Ben quickly to the car knowing that they were still being watched. 

Ben opened up the passenger side door for her to slide in and she did so eagerly playing with the silk on her dress.Or nervously.He wasn’t sure. 

Once Ben sat in the driver's seat he turned to Rey as he started the ignition.“I didn’t know Rose was having an after party tonight.”

“I just told Chewie that so he wouldn’t freak out. I’m not going to tell him I’m spending the night at your house.He couldn’t look at me for a week when I started taking Birth Control.I suppose this is what having a dad is like though,” she smiled fondly and gazed over at Ben.

He smirked, slightly relieved.  "Then let's get this whole Prom thing over with."

 

—-

 

“Thank you.”

Rey knew it wasn’t the best response, but it was something she meant.

“What?”

“Thank you.”Rey learned forward a bit before shifting her weight to stand before Ben.“For a long time, too long really, my mind had convinced me of a thousand different scenarios of why I wasn’t good enough, or what I could have done differently.”

Ben looked up at her, ready to object to the statement, but Rey held out her hand to stop him. 

“I know.And I knew, somewhere deep down, back then too.The mind can be horribly self-destructive, it’s funny, isn’t it?  We know there was nothing we could have done, but we still blame ourselves anyway.As connected as you may be to someone, as close as you may be, you still aren’t them.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“I wasn't looking for an apology, Ben” Rey shook her head a bit, “Not really.”

“What were you looking for?”

Rey reached out her hand, extending it to Ben who was still sat upon the floor.He gazed upon her fingers for a second before meeting her grasp and taking ahold of her palm.Rey pulled and with some assistance from Ben’s own efforts lifted him from the ground.Full height. Standing looking down at her.Their hands grasped between them before their hearts. 

There were so many ways Rey wanted to answer that question. _Hope. Closure. An Opportunity. Answers._

Instead, she looked behind Ben at his old dumb locker.Stood up on her toes, and placed the lightest kiss on the corner of his mouth before landing back on her heels.

—  


  
Prom itself had lived up to all of Ben’s zero expectations.He was glad Rey seemed to have fun, but he wasn’t kicking himself over not attending many other similar school functions.He was thankful the days of paying money to be in a room full of his gyrating peers were finally over.Unless… Rey wanted him to come back next year. 

He’d pay for her to fly to wherever he was instead.He’d throw money at her so he’d never have to step foot in this lifeless town again. 

Hosnian wasn’t even that small.It wasn’t one of those cities that everyone knew each other.Ben just felt small there. Like he didn’t have options.Everything that happened around him was unimportant.It was suffocating.Rey had been the only redeeming thing about this damn place, and they would get out of here together.He knew that.She’d want to see the world and make a legacy for herself. She had nothing keeping her here. 

Rey danced into the Solo house after the dance had ended spinning.If he hadn’t been so conscious of making sure no one had spiked one of her drinks he would have been suspicious that she was intoxicated.But turns out, happiness was a drug that he had yet to fully understand. 

“Come on, Ben, you had a little fun,” she said, kicking off her heels, flinging them across the room.His parents wouldn’t be back until Monday, he would worry about cleaning up later. 

“I preferred it to torture, I’ll give you that.”Ben slipped his dress shoes off by the front door and locked it behind them.He’d already unbuttoned the top buttons of his shirt and loosened his tie, but he was ready to not be wearing a suit any longer. 

“Thank you, for doing that for me.” Rey spun around once more and flung her arms around Ben in a frivolous fashion.“I had fun.”

“Then it was worth it.”Ben kissed her hairline which left the slight taste of hairspray on his lips. She hummed, holding herself to his chest, in a moment of joy before looking up at him. 

“So…”

“So?”

She quickly glanced over her shoulder towards the staircase, then back to him with flushed cheeks.“You want to go upstairs?”

He could have said yes in a variety of languages or styles, but instead, all that came out of his mouth was a flustered, “yerhem.”

Rey giggled though, showing that she understood and slipped her hand into his and lead them both into the unlit stairwell.She seemed so confident in this.Her confidence had the opposite effect on Ben making him a nervous wreck.He wanted this.This very moment was something he’d thought about well over a thousand times since the day they met.He was going to fuck this up. 

When they reached Ben’s door, Rey took one step inside and Ben paused. “I’m gonna… rinse off really quick,” Ben stammered, gesturing down the hallway to the bathroom.“I’m really sweaty, this suit is a sweatbox.” 

_Yes. Talk about how sweaty you are.That will make her want to have sex with you._

Rey pouted before saying okay, and Ben dashed down the hall.He turned on the faucet, letting the room fill with steam as he stripped every last layer from his body.Free from that dreaded thing, he caught a glimpse of himself in the quickly fogging mirror and was hit with a wave of self-awareness. 

_God damn, he was gawky._ His ears were too big.He had too many weird freckles and moles.And man _alive_ was he sweaty. He grasped the edges of the sink and took a few moments to breathe to try to calm himself before getting into the shower.  
  
_She wanted this,_ Ben had to remind himself. She knows what you look like, she knows you have a big nose and weirdly disproportionate hands and she still wants this.He wished sex wasn’t such a big deal to him.She would probably break up with him the minute he came back into the room after realizing how idiotic she was for dating him for a year and a half. A million thoughts rushed his head as the water pounded against his back and none of them were comforting. 

Why couldn’t he believe that she actually wanted him? Was she only using him? Would she leave him the second she had the chance? When he left for college would she want someone more convenient? 

A weird thumping echoed in the bathroom.Ben lifted his head and quickly turned off the water to attempt to place the noise. 

_Thump.Thump._

Ben jumped out of the shower and quickly toweled off, throwing only his dress pants once more, because like an idiot he forgot to bring clean clothes into the bathroom, and opened the bathroom door.  
  
_Thump._

“Rey?” Ben queried to no response.He sauntered back down the hall towards his room where the steady noise got louder. He opened his bedroom door to see a sight that made every intrusive thought leave his head, if only for the moment. 

Rey was leaping oddly around the room, her arm contorted around herself reaching desperately at the zipper down her back. She jumped one more time, trying to force her arm to be able to reach before landing with a _thump_ and groaned before spotting Ben. 

“I can’t reach the zipper.” 

Ben smiled.“You know that’s something I can help with?”

Rey’s cheeks pinked once again and she met his smile with her own.“Yeah, but I thought… I don’t know I was trying to be sexy or whatever,” she grumbled at that last bit, embarrassed she even admitted it. 

Ben walked fully into the room and shut the door behind him.Still only in his dress pants.“You know you are the most beautiful, perfect, intelligent, amazing person I have ever known.”

“I’m not perfect,” she said, walking towards him.

“You are to me,” he countered quickly.Taking her hands in his and kissing her knuckles.“You always will be to me.”

“I love you, you know that right?” Rey tipped up her chin and said those words against his lips.

“I’m not sure I’ll ever believe it.” Ben pulled her flush against him, taking her lips with his own.Kissing her deeper and deeper until the room around them seemed to disappear into the darkness, sliding his hands up her back to start pulling down the zipper while hers came around his front to do the same. 

 

—  
  
Shit. _Shit_.

She just _kissed_ him. 

A guy she hasn’t seen in ten years.Someone who she should have considered a perfect stranger for all intents and purposes. 

But she couldn’t.

She wasn’t sure she ever could. 

No matter what they went through, or no matter how long they were apart, she always felt like she had that right to him. The one who knew him best.The one who understood him more than anyone. 

Then why could she not even begin to decipher what the hell Ben Solo’s reaction to _that_ was? 

It was just a quick kiss.Not even fully on the lips.It could have been a kiss of gratitude between old friends (even though Rey knew that was bullshit).Maybe he wouldn’t even think twice about it.They could go back to the reunion they’ve been avoiding for the last hour as friends. 

Except Ben Solo was petrified in his place, unmoving, in shock, which meant he 100% was thinking about it. 

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have-“

“No! No,” he shook his head rapidly, “I wasn’t… I was just surprised.”

“Me too, I guess,” Rey said with a laugh even though she could feel her face burning. 

“In a good way,” Ben quickly clarified, clearly trying to keep control of the ‘moment’ before it was gone.Rey, like the fool she was, found it idiotically charming.“I— I missed you.A lot, Rey.”

“Me too.”

“I know we grew apart, and well, grew up, but there wasn’t a day that I didn’t pray to whatever deity is up there that you were happy.Even if that meant you were with someone that wasn’t me.” 

“Well, clearly you weren’t praying hard enough,” Rey said in jest, poking him in the chest with a grin, “because I keep getting dumped.”

“Because the world is full of God Damned idiots.”

“They had their reasons.” Rey didn’t go into more detail.Her past relationships always ended the same way, them asking if she was invested, her lying and saying she was, and them seeing right through it.She wished with all her might she could fall in love the way she had all those years ago, but no one could even sort of win that level of affection from her.No matter how much she wished it to be so. 

It had been years since she pined after Ben Solo, but she wasn’t sure she ever truly got over him.It was hard to be in any relationship when in the back of your mind you knew you had the ability to love someone more. 

Ben looked down at her as if he could read her thoughts, his head slightly cocked to the side. 

Rey had to remind herself that he was only here for one night.He would be gone tomorrow and she would have to get over him all over again.She shouldn’t have kissed him.She should have just gotten her closure and been happy with that.Rey put distance between them and nervously scratched the back of her head. 

“Well, we should get back to the reunion, I have a punch table to look after-”

“Rey.”

“You probably have a lot of people you want to talk too, catch up with-”

“Rey!”

“the cups probably need some refilling, I’ve been gone too-“

“REY.” He placed both hands firmly on her shoulders before lifting one hand to turn her chin to face him.“Do you honestly think I came all the way here to see anyone except for you?”  
  
“Your mom, maybe?” Rey said, in a voice so weak she wasn’t even sure he could hear her. 

“I can fly back to see my mom anytime I need too.”He took a step forward, but this time Rey didn’t retreat.“You, though. I didn’t know when else I’d get the chance.” 

“This is a bad idea.”

“Some things never change.”

And before he could fully close the gap, Rey wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled his lips to hers. Fully and all-consumingly. 

 

—

 

Ben kept having to resist the urge to shake even after the fact.His nerves should have calmed by now, and while they had calmed significantly from the beginning of the night, there was still a shiver of panic in his blood.The room was dark.Quiet.He wrapped his arms around Rey’s back, hoping that if he gave his hands something to hold they would still, and the warmth of her bare skin did begin to soothe him.He pulled her in close, pressing his lips into her hair as she nuzzled into his chest.Just when comfort seemed to arrive, Ben felt something wet near his pec where Rey’s face was. 

Panic.

He pushed Rey back from him, so fiercely he nearly flung himself off his own bed and onto the floor and Rey yelped in shock. His hands grasped her shoulders

“I’m so sorry,” he pleaded and Rey looked at him blankly, “I’ve hurt you, haven’t I? We shouldn’t… I shouldn’t’ve… I’m so-“  
  
“Ben,” Rey said softly, wiping the one stray tear from her cheek.Ben tried to scramble up from his spot, but Rey grabbed his wrist and pulled him back down.“Ben, I’m fine.”

“No, your not, I’ve done something wrong-“ he began to sputter again.His heart had never ached more in his life.He tried his best to look back at her, but he was paralyzed, Rey shuffled from behind him and lifted her hand to his cheek, turning his face towards hers.

“Ben, I’m really happy.”She smiled.  
  
_That damned smile_.

“What?”

“It’s true, Ben.”

“…”

“Growing up where I did, around the people I did, for a long time I wasn’t sure I would have a choice in any part of my life.Where I would live, where I would work, who I could… love.The other girls… I was told my best option would be giving up my body for a couple bucks for something to eat, or to someone who’d be willing to provide that to me, and getting accepted into that exchange program was the best thing that ever happened to me.”Another tear rolled down her cheek, and Ben found himself wrapping his arms around her once more.“And then I met you, someone so utterly different from me in every way, but yet, I find myself connected to you in every way.Two halves of something whole.” She paused to wipe her face again.“I spent so long trying to come to terms that I wouldn’t have love or friendship or family like in the movies, but here I am.I found it.All of it.”

And in some way, Ben understood.And he felt the same.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry to fade to black y'all. But given their flashback ages, had to be a little careful even though it is technically within the legal age range for the state. Just for the comfort of the readers and myself!
> 
> Also, trying my best to finish this before the new year. Wish me luck.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One chapter left!

Ben was sure he had managed to doze off a couple times over the course of the night, but the company was, needless to say, distracting.Rey, on the other hand, had been dead asleep.She was curled tightly into a ball on her side, facing Ben, snoring softly.Ben lifted his arms in a stretch as morning light began to spill into his bedroom, and as quietly as possible he began to crawl out of bed, deciding that the really needed some sort of caffeine.  He slipped into a fresh pair of boxers and exited his room on his toes, shutting the door behind him.

The lights were on downstairs, which Ben found curious, but it was very possible that he had forgotten to turn them off.He trotted down the steps and entered his kitchen to grab two mugs from the counter when he noticed that a fresh pot of coffee has already been made. 

“Good Morning, Ben.”

Ben lept in fright and turned around to see his mother gently sipping coffee at the table, flipping through a week old newspaper. 

“What are you doing here!?” he said with panic.

“I live here, Ben, you sound surprised.”She yawned, clearly exhausted before her brow became quizzical. 

“You… you were supposed to be gone another two days, I mean.” Ben covered.Really praying that Rey slept through all of this. 

“I came home early, I texted you last night.”

‘ _I was a bit distracted last night, mother,’_ he thought. 

“I’m guessing the reason you are so jumpy this morning is that Rey’s here,”Leia looked at him for a moment and Ben was sure his only facial expression was pure horror before she nonchalantly looked back down at her newspaper.“How was prom?”

She always did this.She could never act like a normal mother in these scenarios.Always absurdly diplomatic about everything. 

“F-fine.”The room became quiet.Leia turned the page. “Look, mom, Rey will freak out if she knows you are here, I don’t want her to feel embarrassed or-“

“I’ll make myself scarce after my coffee.” She waved her hand as to say 'not to worry' andBen poured two mugs and hoped the conversation would be left at that.“You two were safe, right? I get to ask one parental question.”

Ben choked on air and looked anywhere except his mother. “Um, yeah.” 

“Good.”Ben heard her sip her coffee one more time and he dashed towards the stairs.

When he made it back to his room, two steaming cups in hand, he looked at Rey who still slept soundly, buried in blankets. 

She was the only thing in the entire world that mattered at that moment.

He’d do anything to give her the life she deserved. He’d do anything to get her out of this place.She’d never have to worry about her future again because he’d live the rest of his life for her happiness.

Which meant they would leave this place together.  


 

 

—

 

 

“You look… happier than the last time I saw you.” Finn said as Rey slid back behind the punch table. 

“Shut up.”

“What? It’s a good thing.You were a positive wreck before.” Finn nudged her in the side and even though Rey tried to frown at his teasing, she couldn’t. Rey looked across the room at Ben who had his arms crossed and brow furrowed while conversing with his mother.

“It’s nice seeing him again, he’s doing well,” Rey said simply, trying to avoid Finn catching on to the fact that she and Ben just spent the last twenty minutes making out in a poorly lit hallway. 

“You hooked up, didn’t you?” _So much for that._

_“_ Well, that’s an assumption,” Rey said, pretending to be offended, but she knew Finn saw through it, “we kissed.”

“Kissed or _kissed.”_ Finn winked, leaning in like he was about to hear the gossip of the year. 

“Just because we are in a high school doesn’t mean we have to act like we are in high school,” Rey groaned.

“Come on, Rey, I have twenty bucks riding on second base.”

“You put money on this?” Rey tried to look within herself to be upset but just laughed.“You should have told me, I would have put money in the pot.”

“That’s my girl,” Finn wrapped his arm around her and pulled her into a side embrace, “at least I gave you credit for some discretion on your part, Rose put her money on a full home run.”

“Well, at least you two will break even tonight,” Rey murmured with a blush. 

“I knew it.” He playfully bumped her once more. 

Rey glanced back over to Ben who had leaned down awkwardly to hug his mother in a show of affection Rey wasn’t quite sure she ever saw in their youth.Leia and Ben were always entertaining to watch. Even though he'd resented her in ways, Rey was pretty sure Leia was the one authority figure Ben actually respected.

Leia was so small next to Ben it almost made her chuckle. His embrace nearly swallowed her whole, but she couldn’t have looked more pleased about it. Ben nodded to her once more and made his way across the crowd towards Rey and Finn. 

“So...,” he started when he reached the table.

“So.”

“I… I have to get back soon,” he started and Finn distracted himself with pouring more pre-made drink cups, “I’m flying out of Chicago first thing in the morning, and it’s a few hour drive, and it’s already getting late and-“

“It’s okay, Ben,” Rey spoke over him even though her heart ached hearing it again, “you told me at the beginning of the night you were leaving.”

“I wouldn’t have left so soon if I thought-“ he paused, not wanting to seem like he was assuming anything, “I wasn’t sure you’d even want to see me tonight, and I have to get back to work, so I was just, being careful.”

“I know.” 

“You don’t… do you need a ride back to the city tonight?”Ben looked up, shoving his hands in his pockets to give them something to do.

“I’m here until the end of the night, clean up duty, I’ll probably spend the night at Chewie’s.”

“Oh.” He nodded, hiding his disappointment. 

“Hey, uh,” Finn looked up from the punch bowl, trying his darnedest to pretend he hadn’t been listening to the entire conversation, “I can cover for you, Rey, since I know you should get back to the city because you have that _work thing_ tomorrow…”  
  
“Work thing?” Rey questioned and Finn squinted to try to hint something to her.“OH! Well, you don’t have to do that-“

“It’s not a problem, Rey,” he said more quietly, “I know this _work thing_ is a big thing for you.I may not always understand your.. uh… _career choices_ , but I think you should go after the ones you want. Or at least, talk about them.”

“...Thanks, Finn,” Rey said in a hushed tone. Then facing Ben once again who was chewing nervously at his lip, still finding the ceiling more amusing, she said: “actually, I do need to get back, if your offer still stands.”

The way he perked up was comical, like a dog who heard the word ‘treat’.“Yes, of course! I’ll call a car, I’ll pay don’t worry.”

 

—

 

It was really the only thing that made sense. Rey’s student visa wouldn’t last much longer and she’d have to go back to England as soon as it was up.She didn’t have a legal guardian to stop her from making this decision, it was something she could do, even if she was 16.They could wait to formally do it after her birthday in a couple months, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t start planning ahead. 

She would never have to worry about having to go back to that hell she called life again.  But even if she was accepted to an American university, and had her visa extended, she would still have to worry about what came next.What came after graduation.  Finding a job. A home.

She wouldn’t have to worry anymore, Ben thought, toying with his grandmother’s engagement ring. 

While the school year had ended for the seniors, the underclassmen were still in classes, and graduation wasn’t for another week.Ben spent his newly free days stretched out in his room deleting any college 'reminder' e-mails that came his way.He’d decided to defer a year, a decision he had yet to truly tell his parents about.Not that they inquired much about it.He wanted to get everything situated with Rey first before deciding where he’d go to school. 

Rey jumped into his car's passenger seat after Ben had been waiting for her outside and threw her backpack into the back seat.“Ugh, you are so lucky you are done with classes.”Ben quickly shoved the ring into his pocket as he changed gears into drive and headed out of the lot.  With little hesitation, he headed towards the old soccer fields on the other side of town, somewhere quiet and private, with his hand on her lap. 

“You’ll be done soon enough,” he murmured, the damn ring burning a hole in his pocket. 

“Finals are killing me,” Rey moaned and put her head against the window, watching the trees as they passed.“I better get into every university I apply for with this level of hell they put their advanced students in.” 

“I’m sure you will, regardless.”

When they reached the park, Ben shifted into park and glanced at Rey’s bemused expression. 

“I thought we were going to your house?” She said, scrunching up her face at the unplanned stop. 

“We will, I just wanted to go for a walk for a bit.” 

So that’s what they did, finding a nice patch of open field to enjoy the sun in. 

“I... I want to tell you something," Ben said, weaving his fingers within hers, "I’m not sure I can handle not seeing you every day."His other hand shoved deep within his pocket touching the delicate jewelry it held. 

“It will be a change, but we’ve got all summer first,”Rey nuzzled into his shoulder, basking in the warmth. 

“I’m not sure I can handle sticking around the whole summer,” Ben admitted and Rey lifted her head at his tone.

“We… we can go to Chicago one weekend this summer maybe? Go tour the campus before you go?” She suggested, something in her voice praying that this would suffice. 

“Maybe,”he mumbled. Guilt rising in his gut.He still needed to tell her.  

“Is something wrong?” Rey asked, responding to Ben’s face which couldn’t mask anything, “Chicago isn’t that far, we’ll be fine.”

“You don't have the money to travel that much."

 "Then come back home on some weekends."

"I'm not coming back to this shithole."

“Ben, you’ll be at Northwestern! You won’t be that far, we can see each other on weekend-“  
  
“I’m not going to Northwestern!” Ben shouted and Rey’s face turned white, “I didn’t even fucking apply, I don’t want to go there, I don’t want everything handed to me just because of where my parents donate their money, I don’t want to be in this fucking state anymore!”

“Why are you yelling at me?!”

“I’m not yelling at you!”

“You lied?” she said after an apocalyptic pause, “Why didn’t you just tell me the truth?”

“Because you would have realized I'm not worth the trouble.”

“What the hell has gotten into you, Ben?!” Now _she_ was yelling.   She let go of him, putting distance between them, and glared at him, waiting for some explanation that he didn't have. 

“Rey, you are the most important thing to me, and your happiness and success means the world,”Ben took Rey’s face in his palms, and that seemed to comfort them both slightly, “I was afraid you wouldn’t think I was worth the trouble if I was far away, I shouldn’t have lied, I was scared.” It was now or never.  
“We can make it work, I just need to be hone-“Ben wobbled down on one knee, and the world slowed down around him.The color drained from Rey once more. 

“I want you to come with me, wherever I go, I don’t want to wait,” he swallowed hard as he dug the ring from his pocket.“You are everything to me, I… I think we should get married. You could come with me.  You wouldn't have to worry about visas or a home or any of that bullshit again.  We'd be together.”

Following those words were the most devastating moments of silence Ben had ever experienced. Rey shook her head as if trying to wake herself from a strange delusion and her eyes filled with tears, but not ones of joy.   
  
“Are you _serious_?”

“Yes!”Did she think he was _kidding_?  
  
“Are you crazy?!” Rey nearly yelped, jumping away from him, looking like the only thing she wanted to do was run. 

“Wait, _what_?” 

“We’re still in Highschool, Ben!”

“I’m not, not really?”  
  
That's when the realization hit him like a truck. He was being rejected. Not even considered.  He was being soul-crushingly rejected.  Ben scavenged his mind for reasons why and drew nothing but blanks.   She had no reason to want to stay here.  The exchange program had allowed her to come to the country, but she wouldn't need that anymore.  She could finish school or get her GED wherever he went.  She could still go to college are have a career anywhere in the country.   
  
“Why not!? What is keeping you here!? You have nobody," he growled, humiliation bleeding through his speech. 

“I have friends, Ben! Finn, Rose, Kaydel, and what about Chewie? He’s my family now!”

And that was the thing Ben couldn’t stomach.He shoved the ring back into his pocket, stood to full height, stared down at Rey who looked at him as if he was a perfect stranger, and turned away. 

“Where are you going? You drove me here!” Rey said, beginning to chase after him.But stopping herself shortly after, smart enough to know when a battle wasn’t worth fighting.Not when he was like this. 

“You have a cell phone. Call one of your _god damned_ friends.”And he slid into his car and slammed the door.  
  
And if Ben hadn’t been such an idiot, he would have realized at that moment that he wasn’t _upset_ that she had other people in her life that she felt connected with. He was _envious_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a reminder that, well, flashback Ben is going through a rough time. He's pretty lost at this point in his life. And people who are losing everything they hold dear do some pretty shitty things. These chapters are from his perspective, and I wanted it to be clear to why he's so confused about the rejection. But clearly, this boy is wrong.
> 
> Thank you guys for sticking with me. I really want to try to have this story finished by the New Year! Remember when I said this fic was gonna be around 10k. Now here we are rounding 30k. Wowza.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't believe this fic was originally supposed to be just a 10k drabble, and ended up at 32k. I'm trying to practice more with shorter writing projects, and while 32k is still short, not quite the drabble I was intending when I set out writing this. Thank you guys for joining me on this project, and I can't wait to get working on something else soon. This was a fun, light-ish, fic that I hope people can pick up when they just want something a little mindless to read. Sometimes we all need that!

_“Are you crazy?!”_

_“Are you crazy!?”_

_“Are you crazy?!”_

The words echoed in his head as if he was in a cave with no end.  The house was dark. Empty. Lifeless. His parents gone. Always gone.He had nothing. No one.He wasn’t worth leaving for, he wasn’t worth staying for, so what use would it be staying here. 

“I’m not crazy,” he repeated as if it were his mantra, throwing necessitates into a duffle bag.Clothes. Laptop. Cash.Any non-perishable snacks he could find so he wouldn’t have to stop until he needed to refuel his car. 

He tossed the bag into the trunk of his car, not thinking any more than needed to function, and swung open the driver's side door. He put his keys into his ignition, trying to calm his breath, but it just became more aggressive.He was about to pull away when something caught his eye in the backseat. 

_ Her backpack.  _

_Shit._

For the fleeting moment, he considered just ignoring it.  Driving away and discarding it somewhere along the road when he was ready to slow down. The thought fled. Grabbing it and bringing it into his lap, he exited the car with the engine running.He opened the door to his… his parents' house and set the pack gently by the inside of the door.Leia would know who it belonged to.Leia would figure it out.She would be okay.She would always be okay. 

And for the last time, he shut the door. 

He was done pretending he was okay. 

  
—

The ride-share that came to pick Ben and Rey up as they stood in the brisk night air seemed less than thrilled that he’d been assigned a two-hour drive into Chicago nearing midnight.He seemed slightly less peeved though as Ben slid him a preemptive tip for the trouble, Rey unable to see the amount, but it was enough to change the entire demeanor of the driver. 

She briefly wondered if Ben had money.Clearly, he had some family money, he always had, but she wondered if he had much of his own.He looked like it.Living in New York City led Rey to some assumptions, but he was still such a mystery to her.She had so much to ask, but their time was running short.The sand in their metaphorical hourglass was nearly emptied. 

Ben opened the backseat door of the car, a spacious black town car, and Rey slid in and Ben followed. 

“Going into the city?” The driver said, then after reading Rey’s address. 

“Yes,” Rey confirmed as they began to drive off. 

“What brought you into town?” 

“Reunion,” Rey said with a smile, but hoping that the driver wouldn’t be too conversational. 

“I recently brought my husband to my 25th reunion, I’m pretty sure he’s never suffered more.I hope your husband had a bit better time than mine,” he signaled haphazardly towards Ben who just smirked under a subtle chuckle.

But neither had the need to correct him, instead just finding the others hand and having their fingers intertwine.Rey leaned into him slightly and settled in for the long ride home.She thought of what first to say, a million different questions that could take a million different paths.Each option was a choose your own adventure that either ended up with Ben Solo flying off the New York never to be seen again, or her forgoing her apartment and going straight to his hotel. The two sat in the comfortable silence of suburban Illinois until Rey settled on something. 

She adjusted her head against his shoulder and said in a voice just above a whisper, “so, is everything okay?”

Ben crooked his neck to try to look at her, but then looked straight on to the road.The streetlight illuminating his profile every few seconds.“Right now? I think so.”  
  
"What made you come back? What changed?"  


"I did."

And when they at long last pulled up to Rey’s apartment at 2 AM, Rey had to resist every urge in her body to pull him out of that car and drag him upstairs with her.Not even purely for obscene reasons, but just because she wasn’t ready to watch him go again.Perhaps she was frightened how quickly he had managed to mean something to her again.She sat in the quiet for a minute as she contemplated what exactly was going through her mind before Ben spoke.

“I’d like to keep talking to you when I’m back in New York,” Ben said, looking down at his lap as if he was afraid he was about to be rejected.“Hell, I’d like to keep talking to you now.”

“Me too,” she said, matching his tone.

Ben looked down at his watch, screwed up his face, then looked at her as if he knew he'd regret what he was about to say. “I have to go, my flight is in a few hours and I have to get my stuff from the hotel.”

They locked eyes in a way that seemed to communicate one thousand words without a single noise.As if they both knew, whatever future was ahead of them, this was _it._ Whatever life they led, they were each others story. 

Ben pulled out his phone and tossed it over to Rey who looked at it with bemusement.

“I don’t have your number, I assume you have a new one, maybe, I don’t have it anymore-“ he scrambled, “I mean, only if you want, you can add yourself, or not, I won’t know if you put the wrong-“

“You honestly think I’d give you the wrong number?” Rey smiled, opening up his contacts to start putting in her information. 

“I just wanted you to have the option.”

“I know I have the option,” she smirked, handing him back the device.Their hands lightly grazed during the exchange and Rey pulled him back in for one more chaste kiss.A goodbye.A thank you. 

Rey slid out of the car and thanked the driver for the trouble as Ben reached out for her hand one more time. But again, no words.It was an instinctual act.A desperate attempt for more time. Rey watched as he contemplated what his options were, what he could say, what he could do, and they both shared a melancholic look as his grasp on her hand loosened and eventually fell and Rey turned back towards her apartment.  
  
—  
  


…  
  
  
—

 

Ben dug his phone out of his pocket after shucking off his suit jacket and throwing it across the desk.Sitting down on the edge of the bed, he scrolled through his contacts and clicked on his most recent addition. 

“…Hello?” The groggy voice responded, clearly she had already made her bed seconds after the car dropped her off. 

“Do you still like ketchup?” Ben asked instantly.

“Wh-What?” Rey laughed, “Of course I do.”

“Okay, good.I know the people of Chicago seem to hate ketchup, and I couldn’t sleep until I knew if the city changed you.” 

“You’re ridiculous.”

They talked well into the morning, about everything and nothing just like they were kids.Stupid kids who were too young to need each other that much.His eyes began to sting when she’d laugh at his stories, and it took everything in him to keep awake so he could keep listening to her voice.At 4:27 AM they said their goodbyes, and Ben made one more phone call. 

To let the airline know he wouldn’t be making his flight. 

 

—

 

…

 

—

 

“Give me your coat,” Rey said with a shiver as she and Ben walked down Broadway during a crisp New York evening the following Fall.

He moaned in annoyance as he began to shrug off his jacket, but as if he suddenly remembered something he put it back on.“No way, I told you back at the apartment it would get cold at night,” Ben said, tucking himself into his grey peacoat, “You didn’t listen” 

“I liked my outfit!” She argued, giving her off the shoulder blue dress a twirl before digging her arms into his coat, him desperately trying to keep her out.“I know you did too,” she grumbled against his chest, burying into him for warmth.She continued to squirm underneath his buttons until she managed to wrap herself as close to him as humanly possible when her hand hit something as she brought it around his waist. 

“What’s this?” she said, almost to herself as she dipped her hand into his jacket's inner pocket.He tried to swat her hand away but she’d already gotten a well enough hold on it that it slid out before landing on the sidewalk. 

It was a velvet box. Something resembling a jewelry box.  

Her eyes went wide as they stared at the box while people passed them by. Ben, without any sort of urgency, leaned down, picked up the box, and shoved it back into his pocket.He pursed his lips tightly and began quietly walking forward as if nothing had disturbed them.

“Ben?" Rey choked, her cheeks hot, afraid she had just ruined their moment. "Just.. so you know, if you proposed, I’d…”. She ran out in front of him, trying to stop him in his tracks, but then just staring down intently at her feet as if she was talking to them as Ben kept walking. “I… I have lived here for a while now, and I think we’re ready and-“. Ben whirled around and placed one of his fingers to her lips, effectively stopping her from saying anything else. 

“I didn’t propose.” He said, sternly, almost to a degree that made Rey’s heart twist with rejection.“Just wait.”  
  
She'd waited this long.  She could wait until they got home.   
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Ben immediately proposes when they get home 20 minutes later*  
> Thank you guys for reading Coming Home. Like I said before, what was supposed to be a 10k one shot, that I ended up splitting into chapters grew more than 3 times that size. I'm working on a couple other writing projects right now, so we'll see which one I actually get to posting next. Thank you, everyone, who read!

**Author's Note:**

> School Ages  
> Rey: 15/16 Finn: 16/17 Ben: 17/18 Poe: 18/19 Rose: 15/16 Paige: 18/19  
> Reunion Ages  
> Rey: 26 Finn: 27 Ben: 28 Poe: 29  
> Rose: 26 
> 
>  
> 
> *This fic is tagged as underage, but the legal age of consent in this state in which this fic occurs is 16, but I'm tagging it as such just in case.


End file.
